There’s something about great heights in video games that commands us to jump. The Empire State Building in Prototype? Dove off the spire. Stonewrought Dam in World of Warcraft? Leaped off of it and pancaked into the Wetlands. Tall, Tall Mountain in Mario 64? Yahoooooo-splat. It’s the fun of falling from really high up that makes Jumping Flash! an entertaining Playstation game.

On the surface, Jumping Flash looks like another strange 3D platformer that came out around the days of the N64 and Playstation. It features a colorful character (robot bunny), huge, floating platforms, and graphics that, in retrospect, look like they were assembled from Duplo blocks. However, Jumping Flash came out a full year before Mario’s 3D debut, just a month after the Playstation hit North America. Sadly, despite solid reviews, it never got the attention as a pioneer that it deserved.

The plot is strange and generally unnecessary. You’re a robot bunny trying to recover landmarks from an evil villain by jumping really high and running everywhere collecting jetpacks that spell “EXIT.” It’s just an excuse to run around 6 colorful worlds, jumping everywhere and using fireworks to blow up enemies.

You can jump three times in a row, and by charging up your jump you can reach ridiculously high heights. The levels take advantage of this mechanic, with plenty of vertically built platforms stacked high into the air. Every time you jump, you look straight down so you can place your landings by using your shadow. It’s a clever and simple way to avoid the frustration usually found in 3D platformers.

Even though it’s a 3D platformer, Jumping Flash takes place in the first person. Combined with the use of rockets, roman candles, and other explosives as projectile weapons, it often feels more like you’re playing a colorful version of Descent than a precursor to Mario 64. It works very well, though, and adds to the feeling of vertigo when you jump very high.

Jumping Flash wasn’t a deep game and the levels felt more like paintball arenas than the carefully crafted worlds of Mario 64. It didn’t matter, because it was just so fun to jump everywhere, seeing how high you can get and watching the square game world shrink before your eyes. It seems downright paleolithic compared to the 3D games that would come to the N64, but it offers a great perspective to what 3D gaming was like before we really “got it right.” And even then, it still had the potential to be pretty fun.

If you want to give Jumping Flash a try, it’s available over PSN for just $6.