Sky Skipper

released on Jul 01, 1981

You are in control of a small plane and are on a rescue mission to free animals that are held captive by a bunch of gorillas. In order to open the cages you have to drop a bomb on the head of the captor to knock him unconscious. After that the player has only a few seconds to collect the animals with his plane until the gorilla regains his consciousness again. After having saved all animals the plane flies on to the next, more difficult level.


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I always knew Bubsy's drug enjoying developers had to have gotten their inspiration from somewhere. I had no idea this existed until 2024, much less that Nintendo made it. A pretty simple gameplay loop in a lunatic world with very detailed sprites of animals, mostly. It's bizarre, but it's not all that much fun to play.

I'm more fascinated by the bizarreness of Sky Skipper than the design itself, especially with it being a Nintendo arcade game lost because of poor internal reception. Takeda and Miyamoto had this strange idea of a pilot saving a set of Alice In Wonderland-esque characters by having them drop bombs on giant apes, and combos are achieved by saving these characters in chains (because they're all based on card suits).

There's a lot at play here and I get it not being straightforward for gamers at the time. But, that truly doesn't stop it from being charming and unique; something that's no stranger to Nintendo.