Retro Game of the Day! Jungle Hunt

Jungle Hunt! An oldie but goodie, released to arcades by Taito in 1982, and it made the transition to the home systems of the time as well.



This game was exciting because it had many different scenes - it was an early example of a game that felt like it was made up of several minigames, tied together with a unifying theme. You were basically Tarzan - apparently Taito got into hot water with the likeness (video games were quite a different ballgame back then!) so they modded later versions of the game, which was originally known as Jungle King I believe, into a Sir Walter Raleigh-styled fellow. You know, "the rich Jungle Explorer wearing a Monocle.."




For the time, a good game, not particularly hard, but fair test of skill. Jump on the swinging vines - swim with the deadly crocodiles - run up the hills and avoid the tumbling boulders - then save the girl from being (burp) boiled and eaten by cannibals. All in a day's work, eh? Win, and you get to do it again!


Above you'll notice is a home port of the game - a buncha blocky pixels, but that was to be expected on a home system at the time. If you got a whiff of gameplay similarities from the arcade, you'd be beside yourself - still it was a blast to be playing ANYTHING at home and not having to feed quarters into the coinslot. Hey, these were good days...