Big Top

The circus is rolling and you're in charge of its star — a clown facing a barrage of jumps, slippery platforms, and dangerous obstacles. Big Top is a typical platformer from the early eighties when nobody bothered with story. You go, you jump, you dodge things that kill you, and you collect points.

The game takes a simple structure across many levels packed with various traps. The goal is, let's say, crystal clear: get from one end of the screen to the other without being hit by any collision zone. The clown jumps, falls, sometimes moves pretty clumsily — the controls aren't the most precise and that stiffness in movement shows. But that's exactly where the charm of those old arcades lies; you're not a superhero, just a guy in costume trying to survive a bewildering world of colorful pixels and flickering obstacles.

The mechanics are defiantly primitive. You don't have much time to think. Obstacles come in different flavors — sometimes moving parts, sometimes you need to nail the jump timing to the millimeter. The graphics look like they were etched onto monitors with a pencil. The sounds are what you'd imagine: simple sound effects, nothing more, nothing less. Playing starts off fun, but as time goes on you feel the same every time — I jump, I dodge, I move on.

Big Top represents an era when platformers were still building blocks with no particular ambitions. It wasn't Donkey Kong or Mario, but in home computer workshops, thousands of games were made in this spirit. The game had its moment on PC when it was somewhat competitive with arcades. Today only those curious about how things were played in the MSDOS era will take a look — or those who want to try something unknown without big demands.

If you want to go back to when platformers were primitive and one-dimensional, Big Top won't surprise you. It's not a bad game, just forgotten. You can handle it in a browser without much trouble, get through a few levels and move on. You can expect one thing from it: pure, uncomplicated fun without frills. For lovers of MSDOS classics it's worth a moment."