Jetpack 2 Development Blog

By: Derek Yu

On: July 17th, 2009


Video of the original Jetpack.

Adam Pederson, who created the popular 1993 MS-DOS platform game Jetpack, is now actively working on the sequel that many fans presumed to be vaporware. Jetpack 2 is still relatively early in development, but Adam has confirmed that the game will use Flash as the platform, to let users easily create and share levels via the web. Box2d is being used for the game’s physics. The plan is that Jetpack 2 will be released on the web and also as a downloadable binary for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

You can follow Adam’s development at his blog. There are already some good posts up about design and programming, as well as some interesting reflections on life, such as this sobering life update. Keep up the good work, Adam!

TIGdb: Entry for Jetpack

  • Slather

    My jaw dropped when I saw that video. I loved this game when I was a kid. It was a lot of fun and gave me a healthy fear of Short-Circuit-style robots. You could create your own levels, too. Good luck Adam!

  • Nillo

    Haha, I had completely forgotten about this. I absolutely loved this game when I was a kid. I remember that I played the single player mode repeatedly and died on the “Work the leg muscles” level every time. I’m going to download this to see how much better I am at video games than I was in those days.

    Oh, and there was this weird design decision in that sometimes, jetpacks would spawn in a random location on any level, even on the levels where you’re not supposed to have a jetpack (with hilarious results).

  • Tanner

    “Oh, it looks like I’m safe from the marble worm. It can’t get me from th- OH SHIT FUCK THERE’S A SECRET TUNNEL”
    I hate that level with every fiber of my being.

  • Krux

    my dream becomes true

  • MisterX

    Wow, sweet. I, too, used to like this game a lot quite a few years ago. I think I got it from Home of the Underdogs. I especially liked the simple level editor. Because of the jetpack, many different enemies and even a lot of different tiles this was pretty fun to mess around with.

    I will not get very euphoric, as Jetpack is pretty simple and an “upgrade” to that could easily be a lot worse, but I didn’t even know a sequel was in the works before now, so this is definitely unexpected cool news :)
    I’ll keep track of the blog, thanks.

  • SMRobot

    I absolutely loved that game when I was a kid. It was possibly one of my favorite DOS games of all time so I’ll be looking forward to playing a sequel!

  • Jay

    For some reason, I always loved the Christmas edition more than the original. I’d always make these maps where Santa had to steal back the presents and get back out to the roof. Good times.

  • Advenith

    Oh, man, this game was so awesome! I’m glad to see it revived.

  • Chris Whitman

    I’d totally forgotten about this game! I played the original a lot; it’s great to see that it’s making a comeback.

  • davidp

    whoa, this brings back a lot of memories :o

    this is going under bookmarks!

  • Vanguard

    Holy…! I remember this game. I hope he makes most of the levels about evading robots instead of being platforming puzzle stages, because those were just more fun altogether.

    The physics demo on the site looks pretty cool.

  • jimmykane

    @Jay
    Haha, I made the exact same style of level when I had the Christmas Edition.

    God bless those CDs you could buy for a fiver with about 500 shareware games on them…

  • Dock

    I’ve never heard of this game before, but it’s absolutely fantastic that games from fifteen years ago are getting sequels with a much larger audience thanks to flash.

  • http://toadsanime.deviantart.com/ Toadsanime

    My God. I pratically grew up on ‘Christmas Jetpack’, (which was pretty much the same as Jetpack but with Santa) so news on an upcoming Jetpack 2 is mindblowing.

  • Kinetic

    Omg… I loved this game, i spent a lot of hours fiddling with the level editor, and thought it was buried in the forgotten gold pile of old games… Is strange that after many years the developer finally decided to make a sequel.

  • Bob

    JETPACK!

    Still love that game.

  • Phasma Felis

    Hey, I remember this game! It was from the era after save-anywhere became common, but before designers figured out that combining unlimited saves with unlimited lives made no Goddamn sense.

    Decent game, though.