Sky Jinks

Sky Jinks is an air racing-themed video game developed by Bob Whitehead for the Atari 2600 video game console, and published by Activision in 1982. It is one of the earliest vertically scrolling video games, and one of the first video games to simulate a drop shadow with 2D computer graphics.

In the mid-1980s, social psychologist Roy Baumeister used the game in his psychological research into performance anxiety. Activision anthologized Sky Jinks in the Playstation CD-ROM A Collection of Activision Classic Games for the Atari 2600 (1998), and in the multi-platform collection Activision Anthology (2002). In 2010, they republished the game through Microsoft's Game Room service.

In Sky Jinks, the player pilots a low-flying Seversky XP-41 airplane through a time trial. To complete a game level, the player must bank around a prescribed number of pylons. The XP-41 can bank left and right, as well as accelerate and decelerate. Flying into a pylon, tree, or hot air balloon slows down the plane.

The game comprises four predefined courses—Polo Grounds, Aero Race, Love Field, and Speedy Meadows—as well as a pseudo-randomly-generated course called Thompson Tourney.