How to play Sky Jinks online
- Bank left and right: left and right arrow keys
- Throttle: hold Space to speed up, let go to slow down
- Start the race: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
- Choose a course (Games 1–5): F11 (the console’s Select switch)
- Trees in your path or not: F4 toggles the Player 1 difficulty switch
- Save and load your progress: Ctrl + 0–9 saves to a slot, Alt + 0–9 loads it
The up and down arrows do nothing in this game: your speed is controlled only by the fire button.
Gameplay
The course is marked by coloured pylons. Blue pylons must be passed on your left, red pylons on your right. Fly past one on the wrong side and three seconds are added to your time. A counter on screen shows how many pylons are left. It goes down for every pylon you pass, and also for every pylon you crash into, so a number still showing at the finish tells you how many you missed.
Pylons are not the only obstacles. Trees and hot air balloons also get in the way, and hitting any of them costs you speed and precious seconds. The race ends when you have flown the whole course, and your result is simply the time on the clock.
Courses and difficulty
There are five games, each a longer course than the one before:
| Game | Course | Pylons |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Polo Grounds | 25 |
| 2 | Aero Race | 50 |
| 3 | Love Field | 75 |
| 4 | Speedway Meadows | 99 |
| 5 | Thompson Tourney | 99, with a new layout every time |
Games 1 to 4 always use the same course, so you can learn them by heart. Game 5 builds a fresh course each time you select it, which tests your reactions rather than your memory. Only the left difficulty switch is used. In position B, trees stay out of your direct flight path. In position A, trees can appear anywhere, including right in front of you.
Tips for a faster time
- Learn one course first. Polo Grounds is short and never changes, so it is the best place to practise your turns.
- Read the colours early. Decide which side of the next pylon you need while it is still near the top of the screen. A late correction usually means a crash or a penalty.
- Fly close to the pylons. Wide turns waste time. Once you are comfortable, keep the throttle held and turn tightly around each pylon.
- Ease off for tricky sequences. Letting go of the button for a moment is often cheaper than hitting a tree or missing a pylon.
- Recover quickly. After a crash, get back on the throttle straight away rather than drifting.
The story behind Sky Jinks
Bob Whitehead was one of Activision’s founders, and Sky Jinks has a lot in common with his earlier Activision game Skiing: a top-down race against the clock through a course of gates. The P41 name and the Thompson Tourney course nod to the air races of the 1930s, where the Thompson Trophy was a famous prize.
Like many Activision games, Sky Jinks came with a challenge. Players who finished Game 1 in under 37 seconds without missing a pylon could send in a photo of their TV screen and receive a “Sky Stars” patch. The game later reappeared in Activision’s retro compilations, including the 1998 PlayStation collection and Activision Anthology in 2002. In the mid-1980s, psychologist Roy Baumeister even used Sky Jinks in research on how people perform under pressure.
