Jungle Hunt

About

Jungle King, later revised and reissued as Jungle Hunt, is a side-scrolling action game in which an explorer must cross the jungle and rescue his kidnapped companion from a group preparing to cook her. The journey consists of four consecutive stages, each built around a different style of play. A continually decreasing timer applies to the entire rescue attempt, and the player loses a life by colliding with a hazard, falling, drowning, or allowing the timer to expire. The first stage takes place among the treetops. The explorer automatically travels across the screen by swinging from a series of vines or ropes, depending on the version. The player must carefully time each jump, since the lines swing at different speeds and a missed leap sends the explorer falling to the ground. Later rounds add monkeys that climb along the lines and can knock him loose. The second stage is an underwater passage through a crocodile-filled river. The player can swim in any direction and use a knife against crocodiles, although an attack must be timed around the position of the animal’s jaws. Crocodiles may instead be avoided entirely. An air gauge decreases while the explorer is underwater and is replenished by surfacing; remaining submerged after it empties costs a life. Streams of bubbles rising from the riverbed can also interfere with movement and force or carry the explorer toward the surface. The third stage follows a mountainside covered by rolling and bouncing boulders. Smaller rocks can be jumped over, while larger boulders may be avoided by jumping, ducking, or running beneath them as they bounce. The player can move forward or backward to create enough room for each maneuver, but must continue making progress before the overall timer expires. In the final stage, the explorer reaches the camp where his companion is suspended above a cauldron. Two spear-wielding guards move back and forth beneath her, requiring the player to jump over them and their raised weapons. A final leap must then be timed to reach the moving rope holding the captive; jumping at the wrong height causes the explorer to fall into the cauldron instead. Points are awarded for reaching ropes, defeating crocodiles, avoiding boulders, and jumping over the guards. Additional bonuses are granted for completing individual stages and for rescuing the captive with time remaining. An extra life is awarded after reaching a designated score. Completing all four stages begins another rescue with faster and more numerous hazards, additional monkeys, more difficult enemy patterns, and a timer that decreases more rapidly. One or two players can participate in most versions, with two players alternating turns. The original arcade release was titled Jungle King and featured a bare-chested, Tarzan-like protagonist, vines, and a distinctive yell. Following objections concerning its similarities to Tarzan, Taito revised the game as Jungle Hunt, replacing the hero with a safari-clad explorer, changing the vines into ropes, and removing the yell.

Description and score courtesy of MobyGames ↗