There needs to be an altitude bar. It's really too hard to time the smash when you have no clue where the ground is, especially when moving extremely fast.
Just like Wallace, when I started the game it put me on an impossible level. Literally impossible level not it was just really hard. I then had to hit for it to go to the menu, start a new game, and then finally got to the real first level.
The game broke when I killed two enemies at the same time as I left the screen. I went back to the screen where the enemies were and there was one black diamond I could not pick up, my gun no longer fired, and the heads up display disappeared.
@ Magical Zorse - as a professional game designer, people do care. And I know that if I owned the rights to the original, anybody making copies of my game would be in court.
I would be very careful making games like this. Steeplechase was copyrighted in 1981 and you could possibly get in a lot of trouble over this. If nothing else I would at least change the name to avoid possible problems.
One problem I have found is if you sell or equip an item, if the action is not done and you try to move a second object, the second object will be locked in its current position until the end of another round.
One thing I've always found funny with a games like this is that nothing ever comes from behind or the sides. How did this person find the perfect spot where they only have to defend from one place.
The controls kept bugging out on me. The character would keep geeting stuck in a continous jump or it would start running left nonstop causing me to atomatically fail.