Jungle Hunt

About Jungle Hunt

Jungle Hunt (1982) is Taito's arcade platformer, first released as Jungle King until Edgar Rice Burroughs's estate objected to its Tarzan-like hero, in which an explorer swings on vines, swims with crocodiles and dodges boulders to save a woman from cannibals.

Jungle Hunt in Depth

The game has four scenes scrolling from right to left. First, the explorer swings from vine to vine, pressing the button when two vines are close enough; missing one drops him to the jungle floor and costs a life. He then dives into a crocodile-infested river, stabbing crocodiles from below with his knife when their mouths are closed and surfacing for air, where he cannot attack, while rising bubbles can carry him upwards, sometimes into crocodiles. Next he runs up a hill, jumping or ducking boulders that bounce at varying speeds and heights. Finally, he must evade cannibals to reach a woman being lowered into a cauldron, and rescuing her brings "Congratulations!", "I Love You!!!" and a kiss. Later rounds repeat the scenes with monkeys on the vines and a spear-throwing cannibal in the tree.

Along with Moon Patrol, released a month earlier, Jungle King was one of the first video games with parallax scrolling. After the Burroughs estate's legal action, the hero became an explorer in a pith helmet and safari outfit, the vines were redrawn to pass as ropes, and the Tarzan yell at the start was replaced with music.

Making Jungle Hunt

Taito developed and distributed it in arcades in 1982 as Jungle King, then quickly modified and re-released it as Jungle Hunt. Jungle King was the top-grossing upright cabinet on the RePlay charts by October 1982, Jungle Hunt topped them by January 1983, and by July 1983 it had sold an estimated 18,000 cabinets in the US. Bill Kunkel of Electronic Games predicted it could be Taito's "biggest hit since Space Invaders", following "the classic formula... easy to learn, difficult to master", though he called the vine graphics "downright hideous" and doubted its staying power. Atari published home versions for the 2600, 5200 and 8-bit computers in 1983, with Atarisoft releasing it for the Apple II, ColecoVision, Commodore 64, VIC-20, IBM PC and TI-99/4A. Video Games Player rated the 2600 version a B+, and Electronic Fun found the 5200 version a big improvement on the "disappointing" VCS one. It received a Certificate of Merit for Best Adventure Videogame at the 1984 Arkie Awards and is included in Taito Legends.