Barnabe must retreive the great poem of his family ‘THE BALLAD OF JUMPING BARNABE’, which is lost in lots of locations. Using the D pad and A button, the idea is to reach the top of the both screens. Each screen consists of 8 floors, and Barnabe has to jump throught the (moving) holes in these floors to progress. If Barnabe falls down one of these holes, he is momentarily stunned, and loses a life if he falls through the bottom floor. Things are made more difficult on later levels with the addition of nasties that walk along the floors, and also need avoiding. The number of nasties present depends on the level Barnabe is on.

After each level is completed, a line from the lost poem is revealed. The game consists of 20 levels, which revealed one line of the poem each time and five differents worlds with differents nasties too.