I remember hearing sometime in the 90s that a new video game came out in which you play an earthworm. That made me curious, if only because of the sheer absurdity of the idea. The worm is put – as it turns out – into a fancy power suit and is also equipped with a small pistol that can even be converted into a rocket blaster via power-up. The worm's origins are unmistakably the world of colourful, funny cartoons that popped up like mushrooms in those times. My surprise just increased as I heard about a version of that game for my little monochrome Gameboy.
Although arcade games were often technically much more advanced than their home counterparts in past times, most lost their ability to impress. Reliance on flashy audiovisuals rarely works when even better things become possible – nothing ages as badly as yesterday's technical sensation. But then, there are those games which are so far ahead of their contemporaries that the rest of the world literally took decades to catch up. Now, in 2013, Dragon's Lair still looks as impressive as it did thirty years ago: Fluidly animated, sharp cartoon scenes never get old. Just look at something like an old Tom & Jerry cartoon – just from the visuals, you will not be able to tell when it was made; it's a timeless technique.
Life simulation games have a special charm: On the one hand you go through your motions from day to day, on the other hand you want to escape it by having a go at the motions of someone else. So, you kind of ask yourself what it would be like to replace your daily routine with a more exciting one from somebody else. And that is the crucial point of the genre: Is the virtual life different enough to entertain you? Has it got enough distractions to offer, at least for a short while? For Space Jobs the answer is clearly no. Because although shows signs of some promising attempts, they get lost in a maze of advertisements, half-done ideas and programming bugs.