Jungle Hunt

Released in 1982, I played the hell out of this game and it remains one of my all-time favorites.  It was often one of the loudest games in any given arcade and I still have fond memories of both the music and the sound effects.

The main game consists of 4 stages.  In the first, you swing from vine to vine across a jungle like set of screens, 10 vines in all.  You have to judge the timing of the vines correctly or fall to your death on the jungle floor below.  The second stage has you fighting crocodiles in a river armed with only a knife.  The crocodiles open their mouths randomly making avoiding them often a better strategy than fighting them.  In addition, you have to manage your air supply as well as avoid sets of bubbles that rise from the river floor which will incapacitate you, pull you to the surface and make you a sitting duck for crocodiles.  On the third stage you're climbing up a hill while boulders fall toward you, bouncing erratically, forcing you to jump over or duck under them.  On the final stage you face two native bushmen who have captured your girl and have her suspended over a boiling cauldron.  Once you finish all four stages you get the one-screen ending of the girl giving the adventurer a much-deserved kiss.  Then you get to start over with each stage palette-shifted and slightly faster.

The four stages of level 1.

In addition, to the new colors and increased speed, the next couple of levels start adding extra features to make things more difficult.  Starting on level 2 you will face a couple of baboons on stage one who will knock you off the vines and kill you.  On level 3 you will have to dodge multiple rocks on stage 3 falling simultaneously and an additional bushman on stage 4 throwing spears at you from the trees.  Level 4 has all of these things and makes you weaker and unable to jump a high or far.  After this point, the game just gets harder and harder, faster and faster until you die.

Level 2, with baboons.

Level 3, with multiple rocks and new bushman in tree.

For my play-through, I decided that I wanted to try to beat every stage through, at least, level 4.  It took about a week of playing about an hour a day to accomplish this goal.  One of the biggest frustrations is having to start from the beginning after each failed attempt.  I got very good at level 1 and level 2 and slowly progressed through level 3.  Level 4 took forever to complete, especially the falling rock stage; get hit by a couple of rocks and it's back to the beginning. Once I figured out the patterns, however, I was finally able to get through level 4 and started stage 1 of level 5 only to die on about the third vine.  Oh well, mission complete.

Level 4, hard as hell.

The only stage I got to in level 5.

One of the things that I wanted to talk about here is the concept of home version letdown.  Consoles of this era were dramatically underpowered compared to arcade machines.  What this usually meant was that a console version of any given arcade game was quite a bit simpler than it's arcade counterpart.  I had the Atari 2600 version of Jungle Hunt in my home and played it quite a bit, but it's a far cry from the arcade version.  Stage one was ridiculously easy, barely requiring you to time the vine swings at all.  Stage two had crocodiles but no bubbles which, in the arcade version make additional hazards to avoid.  Stage three had rocks rolling on level ground without the erratic bounces that make the arcade version so hard.  Stage four has native bushmen, but you face them one at a time without the spear throwing version on later stages.  There is also little to no music on any stage.  I do prefer the home version ending, however, as it has both characters sort of dancing around instead of the big graphic of the girl kissing the old man.

Still fun, but much simpler.

I still love this game and had a blast playing through the arcade version of the game.  I played the Atari version as well, just for completeness but it hardly compares.  If you can get MAME running on your computer, I would highly recommend giving this game a try.  It's got some great, catchy music and some decent graphics for the age.

Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress

This game had me stuck for a really long time.  It's not that it's difficult, it's not.  It's just that it's not a very good game.  The first Ultima was kind of fun and quirky and was interesting enough to keep me involved, but this one didn't have the same magic.

Plot-wise, Ultima II picks up where the first one left off.  You've defeated the evil wizard, Mondain, but his disciple, Minax has emerged to revenge his death.  And that's it... not much of a plot.

The game is almost exactly the same as the first Ultima.  Same graphics, same controls, etc.  It's located on Earth this time instead of Sosaria and takes place over 5 eras of history.  You start on medieval Earth and, through time-gates, make your way around Pangea, 1990AD, which is closest to "modern times", the Aftermath, which is a post-apocalyptic world and the Time of Legends, which is supposed to be the origin of time, or something like that.

The place is England, the year is 787...

In addition to the different time eras, you are also able to travel to the other planets of the solar system this time around.  Each planet is habitable and can be landed on and some of them even contain dungeons to explore.  Oddly, every time period and every planet contain the same exact set of enemies; So, in medieval England, Pangea, post-apocalyptic U.S. and Jupiter you will face Orcs, Thieves, Wizards and demons.

Space!

Sounds good so far, right?  Well, let's get on with the bad.  I'll start from the beginning.  You can choose your class from 4 options, however, since you can only use spells in dungeons and you don't actually need to go to a dungeon for anything at all, you may as well just pick one of the two melee fighters.  Wizards and Clerics are pretty useless.  Next, unlike the first game, there are no quests and, therefore, no reason to explore any of the dungeons or towers.  There are a couple of cities that you need to go to, to level up your skills and to get the rocket ship, but beyond that, there's no reason to visit any of the other cities.  You eventually get to space, but the only planet you need to visit is Planet X making the other planets irrelevant.

My useless Cleric.

In addition, the best way of leveling is to get yourself a boat.  Once you have that, you can shell enemies from the sea.  The ship has weaponry better than most land items and keeps enemies from ganging up on you since they cannot get to you at sea.  Essentially, I fought land enemies until I got the requisite item then procured myself a ship.  With the ship, I farmed enemies until I had enough money to buy the best weapons and armor and upgrade my health to several thousand points.  Then I went to the city with the rocket ship, launched to Planet X, got the item there and returned to face Minax.

Farming the baddies...

Overall, it was a very easy game and easily exploited.  I suppose you could try to play the game without exploits, but the game all but discourages you from doing so.  Going to dungeons and exploring further than necessary will only diminish your health and gold, leaving you weaker than before you entered.  You get no special items or quests from exploring them so there is, literally, no reason to do so.

Well, she's dead... so there's that.

So, non-existant plot, non-existant quests, half the classes available are useless and most the cities, planets and dungeons are irrelevant.  Did I miss anything?  I finally beat the game and it seems like it took forever to do it.  Hopefully, the next Ultima will be better.

A poor game... play it if you must, but avoid it otherwise.