Jungle Hunt
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1983 Taito
Colecovision
Four screen side adventure type game where the object is to rescue your girl from cannibals. In the wake of Donkey Kong many adventure games were released (precursors to true scrolling platforming games.) These games usually followed a similar format to Donkey Kong - four screens with differing challenges that increase in difficulty as the player progresses. Jungle Hunt is one of the more successful of this genre.
Originally the main hero was going to be a Tarzan type character (in fact there was a rare version of this game with said character called "Jungle King") however due to legal complications the main character was changed to a European explorer type. The game involves four stages:
1) Jungle vine swinging stage: Jump from vine to vine. Later levels have apes which knock you off.
2) River crossing stage: Swim across a river and knife the occasional crocodile.
3) Hill climbing stage: Run up a hill and jump over (or duck under) falling rocks.
4) Final Stage: Save the girl from the cannibals.
None of the stages are particularly hard. Most people with seasoned reflexes will probably be able to pass all of them on thier first try. Later on when the difficulty increases things get a little hairy but overall it's simple stuff from the get go.
Is this version worth playing, in this day of emulators and multicarts? Good graphics, sound, and controls say "yes." This may not be the killer app to make everyone run out and buy a Colecovision. Chances are most modern gamers would put this game in the category of "time waster," that thing you play when you can't decide what else to do. However for what it is, an arcade translation from 30 years ago, the end result comes off well.
Graphics: Well done, well animated, clear looking sprites. They suffer from the fact that most of them seem to be made up of one color. Plus the apes on the vines are pink, for some reason.
Sound: None of the digitized voice from the arcade game, but what do you expect.
Gameplay: Very close to the arcade original, which is not much considering what we have to work with.