It was developed for the Atari 8-bit computers, and versions were also released for the Commodore 64, Apple II, and IBM PC compatibles.

Upon being hit or falling from a height, Jumpman tumbles down to the bottom of the screen, with a measure from Chopin's Funeral March being played.

Jumpman's game run-speed can be chosen by the player, with faster speeds being riskier but providing greater opportunity to earn bonus points.

Randy Glover was living in Foster City, California and had been experimenting with electronics when he saw his first computer in 1977 when he played Star Trek at a Berkeley university open house.

[11] The initial version was written by Albert Persinger, using a compiler on the Apple II, moving the software to the Atari.

The next day he met with Automated Simulations, who were much more excited by the game and agreed to allow Glover to complete it himself.

[13] At the time, the company was in the process of moving from the strategy game market to action titles, which they released under their Epyx brand.

[14] Aiming the game at the newly enlarged RAM available on the Atari 800 led to the 32 levels of the final design.

[15] The Atari release was a huge hit, and the company soon abandoned their strategic games and renamed as Epyx.

[19] After developing the original versions, Glover moved on to Jumpman Junior, a cartridge title with only 12 levels.

[26] Jumpman became a best-seller for Epyx, selling about 40,000 copies on the Atari and C64 until 1987,[27] reaching somewhere between #3 and #6 on the then-current Billboard top 100 games chart.

[30] Softline in 1983 liked Jumpman, calling it "wonderfully addicting" and stating that it was as high-quality as Epyx's Dunjonquest games.

wrote that it might be dismissed as yet another platform game, but said that "Jumpman easily conquers that skepticism and establishes itself as a software classic".

[32] InfoWorld's Essential Guide to Atari Computers cited it as a standout among Epyx's arcade games.

"[34] Stating that "the care that goes into its products is obvious in Jumpman", The Commodore 64 Home Companion wrote that "it's really 30 games in one, with seemingly endless variants on the simple jumping theme to keep you interested".

[39] In 2014, Midnight Ryder Technologies shipped Jumpman Forever[40] for the OUYA micro-console, with planned releases for PC, Mac, iOS, and Android platforms.

Originally titled Jumpman: 2049, the game is considered to be an official sequel based on rights given to Midnight Ryder Technologies [41] back in 2000 by Randy Glover.