Toss the Turtle

Toss the Turtle is the game that popularized the launch-and-upgrade genre a lot of later distance games borrow from, one big initial launch sets the turtle flying, and everything after that, cannons, jetpacks, mid-air explosives, exists to add distance to that single flight.

Because in-air tools trigger manually rather than automatically, timing a jetpack burst or explosive right as momentum starts dropping tends to extend a flight further than firing them the instant they're available. Coins collected during a run fund permanent upgrades, so a mediocre early flight still contributes real progress toward a much stronger next attempt. Burrito Bison runs the same launch-and-upgrade format with gummy-bear bounces replacing mid-air tools.