Rocket Jockey

[MinisterofDOOM]

Years ago...years and years ago, when my gaming was done almost exclusively on my planet-smashing Pentium 200 with the AWESOME new Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 Pro with it's 4 massive megs of oboard memory and a whopping SIXTY FOUR MEGAFREAKINGBYTES of system RAM, my friends and I would pool our cash every saturday and ride our bikes to KMapart to see what crappy games we could afford.

Most of the time, the games were CRAP (I remember particularly vividly one horrible fighting game with a title not worthy of remembrance that my friend was determined to believe had potential).

Every once in a while, though, we'd get lucky.

One time, the lucky game was called Rocket Jockey.

The premise?

You are a jockey. You ride a rocket. Not a ship or a plane or a rocket car or a rocket pod. JUST a rocket. With steering...kinda. And a pair of grapple hooks.

The Goal?To TEAR other jockeys from their bikes and murder them all the way to death using only your rocket and it's grapple hooks.

The setting?Various large maps with strategically placed pylons for grappling.

See, even with the steering fins, rockets aren't exactly maneuverable. So you use your grapple hooks to snare pylons to help you maneuver.

This system works BEAUTIFULLY. Once you get the art of pylon grappling down, the game takes on a whole new dimension.

There's more, though. See, you can bind your two grapple cables together. Why would you want to do that?Well, you can set up a tripwire between two well-selected pylons and watch as the next jockey through the "gate" is SNARED right off his rocket. Then, while he's down and vulnerable, you kill him.Or, even better, you can grab a jockey, grab a pylon, and then BAM, join the cables and watch the jockey dangle. Have fun! Bonus points for stringing the already-defeated jockey to a second pylon!Or you can always grab a rocket and tie IT to a pylon. Sure, that jockey was planning on going straight, but you decided to change his mind.

The game also has race and ball (sort of sadistic soccer or hockey) modes in addition to the above described War.

Various rockets with different characteristics keep things fun.

And if you manage to survive the final match, a battle against enraged Referees (who are constantly abused during normal war matches) on very special bikes with nasty barbed grapple cables (a match in which you start ON FOOT with no rocket) you get to keep the awesome Ref Bike for yourself.

The only sad thing about the game was that the LAN multiplayer promised on the box was not ready on release day, and the multiplayer patch never actually happened. Just imagine the joy of stringing up real people you care about instead of just nameless pixels...ahh, the joy.

Oh, and on top of the above awesomeness, the game also features a fantastic surf guitar soundtrack by none other than d!ck Dale. So fitting.

P.S.If you happen to have a copy of this game, I WANT IT. I will pay for it.

[Red coupe]

http://www.pcworld.com/downloa....htmlBord at school = free games for youedit: shoot, thats only the demo... I'll see if I cant find the full version later...

[MinisterofDOOM]

Part of the reason I want it on disc is for the d!ck Dale tracks.

Thanks, though. Even a download version of the game would be nice. Just not as awesome as the retail disc.

[Red coupe]

P.S.If you happen to have a copy of this game, I WANT IT. I will pay for it.

If your serious check here: http://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Jockey/dp/B0002VRPPUI saw one was only $5...

Having trouble finding much else... Found a few paysite, and one or two that wanted me to signup...

If you want to give it a go, try googling "Rocket Jockey" megaupload, or replace megaupload with some of the other popular ones (rapid share,ect...)

[MinisterofDOOM]

Wow...people have unopened copies for sale. Score!