Bouncing Babies. The idea sounds noble, but in practice seems somewhat morbid. When a building is on fire, and two fireman are the only ones that stand between life and death, somehow a large trampoline doesn’t seem like the best solution. Delving deeper into the backstory would be pointless. Wondering why so many babies are in a building, and who would figure throwing them out the window to be the best solution. In the end it’s a simple game, so we’ll leave it at that.

As you can gather, babies upon babies are expelled from the top story window of a burning building, and two brave fireman at the bottom have a trampoline that will bounce them into a rescue vehicle. The trick is, three bounces are required to get them to safety. So after the first bounce, you move to the second location, and then the third.

Wave 1 gives you just a single baby, so life isn’t too tough, but as the difficulty progresses, more start tumbling out, and as you are saving one and almost to the vehicle, another needs your attention in the first slot. What happens when you finally miss? Well it hits the ground and cries. I suppose it isn’t as graphic as it could be, not that the CGA color palette would afford you such luxuries like a fifth color.

After each drop, you have less chances, and when used up, you lose. Again I could theorize why this limit is set. After one dropped baby, it’s that bad enough. Or do we still try to save the rest since the burning building is sure death anyway. Should they have unlimited tries and hope most of the babies bounce their way to freedom. No, in the end it’s a game from the early 80’s. Don’t question it too much.

I remember playing this on my old Eagle PC clone off a 5.25″ floppy. I could never get past wave 2, and trying it now proved similar results. I had to use DOSBOX to reduce the CPU cycles to pretty much nothing since there are no hardcoded delays in the program. It just assumes that you are running an 8086 and the natural system speed will regulate the game speed. Movement is controlled by the arrow keys as I just found or by pressing 1, 2, or 3. This was the original method I used since you can jump right from the end to the beginning without passing the middle. Once the babies start coming en masse, it’s necessary. I have no idea how many waves there are. Wave 3 might be the end for all I know.

It’s a nice piece of gaming history when there were a total of 5 you could play.