Jamaican Bobsled Hands-On Preview

What is it about the Jamaican national bobsledding team that makes them so compelling? These guys captured the popular imagination in Disney's Cool Runnings, and they've never really let go. They may very well be the most visible ambassadors for the otherwise esoteric sport of bobsledding. Sensing the zeitgeist, Glu Mobile has obtained the team's official license for its new arcade racing game, Jamaican Bobsled, which will be released this winter to coincide with the Olympic Games.

Before playing Jamaican Bobsled, we had no idea that bobsledding involved so much airtime and coin collection. The game has you running a straight shot down an icy chute, dodging blocks of ice and pulling huge loop-de-loops from one side of the track to the other. The gameplay reminded us a lot of the bonus levels in the Sonic the Hedgehog games: the camera's centered right behind your sled, and you're constantly trying to pull crazy aerial maneuvers to pick up gold and silver coins. The game actually moves with a good amount of zip on the LG VX8000 we played it on, too, reinforcing the 16-bit comparison.

If you pick up a sufficient number of coins on a particular track in arcade mode, you'll unlock the next of around 20 missions. For the more serious players in the audience, Jamaican Bobsled's arcade mode is balanced by a championship mode, which is oriented around traditional time trials and story progression. In either case, the track is littered with all sorts of crazy detritus and contraptions, like springs that bounce you skyward, coconut shields for the front of your sled, and even rocket boosts. Perhaps this winter's Olympics will be more exciting than we thought.

Jamaican Bobsled will be out sometime in November, bringing its zany design aesthetic and catchy steel-drum reggae music to several buttoned-down US carriers. We'll have the full review for you around that time.