Game:

Jumping Flash! (1995)

Duration: 7:29

1,638 views

44

https://www.patreon.com/ulillillia --- It all started about 21 years ago when I got a PS1 and Jumping Flash for Christmas. From my experience with Bubsy, I've always wanted to get up as high as possible so I could achieve the fastest speeds I could. When I got into 3D, for which this and Bubsy 3D were my first 3D games, heights meant better views. It took a while, but when I learned about how to get hyper mode available with Jumping Flash 1 without much trouble (enable level select (up, up, down, down, X, X, left, right, left, right, X, /\, X, /\), choose world 1-3 and defeat the boss. Choose world 2-1 then retire and choose no. Press start again without doing anything else, choose world 6-3, retire, choose no, then press left then start), I doubled the jumping height. I discovered that I could use the bubbles from those red robots in world 4-1 to reach very high heights. Then I found out that I could use the missiles from the pigs/dogs (whatever they are) while playing Jumping Flash 2 to get even higher, but I always kept destroying them. When I figured out how to spare the missile, I could use a single missile to take me all the way to the maximum height, if not even 10 times higher if the game allowed it. Returning to JF1, I tried it there. It's a fair bit harder to do, but I managed to do it and the view from the maximum height in world 1-1 since became my top favorite and most memorable. I often spent hours upon hours going for maximum height like this, returning to this nostaglic moment every now and then. However, I could never realize my dream with this game because I had no way to do it. I even got a SharkLink to go with the GameShark, but the device didn't work. It still left me with a few questions that never got answered until now.

1. What is the maximum possible height, really? That is, in feet or meters... or game units. I have the answer to this question now, it's 23,552. It's rather weird number, but it's roughly 3/4 that of the maximum of a signed 16-bit integer minus 1024. I have no idea where that 1024 is coming from or even why 23,552 is the maximum as it's very weird.
2. Is it possible to go above the clouds? From what I know now, I can make a theoretical prediction of yes. Signed 16-bit integers, of which is what the height (the Y position) is based on, max out at 32,767. A negative value actually means a height above the ground where the main ground has a height of 0. At the maximum possible height, I'm really only about 5 jumps away from the clouds and each jump is roughly 770 units. This means about 3900 units above the maximum. This still only puts them at about 27,500 units above the ground. If I set the height to 32,000, I would indeed be above the clouds... but the catch is, will the game even allow for the position to be set at that without enforcing the 23,552 maximum? The only way to find out is to get the memory address of the Y position and set it to 32,000... perhaps upon pressing the select button. I don't know if it'll work or not, but I could try setting a position of 56,000 (which, for a signed value, would put me about 9500 units below the main ground or 5400 units below the lowest point you could stand on (which is +4096). Exceeding 32,767 will likely yield instant death as from jumping over the edge of the level.
3. Is it possible to completely fog out the clouds at the bottom in world 1-1? For what I can tell, this is not possible because the range of the 16-bit integer is not enough. If it was a 32-bit integer, then it indeed would be, though I don't currently know the ratio for the fogging of the clouds versus the normal game objects. At the maximum height, the lower clouds are about 49,000 units below and there's no hint of them fogging out in any way so it'll likely require a height of a few million units. Jumping Flash 2 has the clouds scaled to half that of JF1 so the distance to the ones above are doubled.

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