
	Platform Colecovision Genre Side-scroller Developer Taito Publisher Atari Year Released 1983
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Jungle Hunt

I’m sure “Colecovision” is actually a name roughly derived from a Latin phrase that means “repetitive.” The classic Donkey Kong had 3 levels that repeated ad nauseum. But Jungle Hunt (JH) has an amazing 4 levels. (Will the variety ever end?)

From what I can deduce, the story for JH is of the Save the Princess variety: your female companion has been kidnapped by dancing cannibals and it’s up to you to save her. You travel through a variety of environments; swinging under a canopy of trees, swimming through crocodile infested waters, running up a hill while dodging

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boulders, and jumping over cannibals to rescue the girl. (Story telling was never the Coleco’s strong suit.) If you’re keeping track, that’s four environments – four levels. Once you finish, you get to do it again and again.

If you’re looking for addictive gameplay, it’s hit and miss. Playing through the same 4 levels again and again with a few twists added (e.g, Monkeys on the vines) gets old fast. Besides,

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most of the twists make JH excruciatingly difficult – your sense of timing must be honed to a razor’s edge! For those with addictive personalities and a complete sense of self-loathing, JH provides minutes if not a whole hour of enjoyment. To encourage haste, a timer ticks down at the top of the screen. It’s not until later levels (of difficulty) that this becomes an issue when you can’t hesitate even for a moment.

Graphically, JH is standard Colecovision. There’s never that much going on on-screen so there’s no slowdown. Characters are blocky and the colors contrast well. But it doesn’t even compare to current titles like Halo or Max Payne. Just another example of how far gaming has come in the last 20 years.

The same can be said of the sound effects, which consists almost entirely of “beeps” and “boops.” In-game music is practically non-existent – there are little ditties for the start of the first level and the end of the fourth – but considering the audio capabilities of the Celco this is probably a good thing.

It may sound as if Jungle Hunt was a bad game when it came out. For its time it was average, but today it’s probably not even worth a second look.

- Omni