Game Review: Jungle Story (Commodore 64, Mastertronic)

Jungle Story, Commodore 64, Mastertronic - 1C 0010
  • 1/10
    Score - 1/10
1/10

Summary

Jungle Story is another early Mastertronic release which was made by The Games Creator.  It also is not very good whatsoever.  You can see the obvious nods to a famous book and film in the game, but it is poorly executed.  The animation and proportion of characters is all wrong, the single channel tune is not really a tune, and it feels like something that a user of the utility knocked up in around an hour, thought “that will do” and submitted it. The lack of quality control really told and only added to the feeling of being ripped off, even at budget price.

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Jungle Story was made with the popular utility The Games Creator, but unlike other early Mastertronic releases was not by the Darling brothers – the identity of who made it remaining unknown.  Clearly, they had ideas from The Jungle Book with even the inlay having reference to you controlling Mowgli.  You control Mowgli through the jungle, avoiding the spears and the monkeys in the trees throwing items as you.  You have a pot of fire, and can use that to face up to the tiger, whose only weakness just so happens to be that very pot of fire.  Convenient that, I think.

Lost in a Forest, All Alone

Once the instructions have displayed and the game has loaded, what is supposed to be a jungle appears more like a forest of trees as the background.  The game scrolls poorly and the enemies you need to avoid head along the screen or above you.  The monkey tends to throw what looks like coconuts down and contact with that is fatal and a loss of life.   You also need to avoid the elephants, the spears, and the snakes.  Not sure who is throwing the spears as they do not appear on screen.  The only thing you can destroy is the tiger, with the pot of fire that you can fire at them.

Monkey Tragic

The monkey appears in the trees and will throw the coconuts down, but as the monkey appears in the trees it appears to be flapping its arms left and right in some vain attempt to try and fly through the air.  It really is not very well animated to be honest.  The snake at least slithers a little across the screen, and the elephant is also out of proportion too – it needed to be larger to be more realistic.  Unfortunately, as the play area is not that large, where heading to the top part of that area at least means you can dodge most of the enemies you need to, a trick was missed here to give the game just that little bit more realism.

Eye of the Tiger

The score counts down continually as you play the game, and the only way to boost your score is to shoot the pots of fire at the tiger, which gives you a good few points.  Interestingly, no matter which way you are facing, firing the pots always fires to the right-hand side, rather than the direction in which you are facing.  I am not sure if that was intentional, but can prove at least useful when in a tight spot heading left and still being able to fire right.  However, sometimes you can kill the tiger and then the death effect sprite of the tiger still hits you and kills you, losing one of your three lives.

Union of the Snake

When you do eventually last long enough or have shot several tigers, the game’s music speeds up in between the level to almost ridiculous levels.  The second level starts, only more of the same and somewhat even more random than previous, with a speed increase.  This is where the random nature more comes into play and shows the limits of the game design in that there is no clear path to introducing more enemies the further you play.  This makes it dull and repetitive, especially with the fact you end up avoiding the elephant and running straight into the snake because you cannot avoid a random placement.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in Jungle Story are in the main poor.  The trees at least look like trees, but the monkeys within them with their laughable animation are something else.  The elephant walks fine as does the slithering snake, but all out of proportion, and your character appears to just walk aimlessly animated.  The sound is the typical one channel tune with The Games Creator, almost as if it was a quick job to put together some notes that sort of resemble a tune, and is an insult to the SID chip to say the least, along with the bog-standard sound effects when you lose a life.

Final Thoughts

Jungle Story really is a poor game.  It has limited appeal with it being a sort of related theme to The Jungle Book, but that appeal soon wanes very quickly when you play.  The randomness of the enemies coupled with the fact that the tiger often appears where you cannot kill it, along with the poor animation, the one channel cacophony of the game’s soundtrack and the fact it appears to just go on and on until you finally survive long enough to get to the next level means that boredom sets in, and quickly at that too.  A sign of how poor the game is was that it was bundled with another game in a two pack for the same price less than a year later.  One to avoid.

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