Jungle Hunt

Did You Know?

• In the Atari branded home versions, the hero is named Sir Dudley and the girl, married to him, is Lady Penelope.
• The Apple II and IBM PC versions of Jungle Hunt were developed by Sierra On-Line.

Gameplay

The game is divided into four right-to-left scrolling sections. In the first, the explorer swings from vine to vine by pressing a button when two vines are close; missing a vine causes a fall and loss of a life. After the last vine, he dives into a crocodile-infested river, where he can attack crocodiles from below with his knife when their mouths are closed, but must surface periodically to breathe and cannot attack while at the surface. Bubbles rising from the bottom can trap the explorer and carry him upward, potentially hitting crocodiles. Next, he runs up a hill dodging boulders that bounce at varying speeds and heights, requiring jumps or ducks. In the final scene, he evades cannibals to reach a woman being lowered into a cauldron; rescuing her displays "Congratulations!" followed by "I Love You!!!" and a kiss. Subsequent playthroughs add obstacles: monkeys on vines and a cannibal throwing spears from a tree.

Reception

In the United States, Jungle King was the top-grossing upright arcade cabinet on the monthly RePlay charts by October 1982, and Jungle Hunt topped those charts by January 1983. By July 1983, an estimated 18,000 arcade cabinets had sold in the US, and it was one of the six top-grossing games during that period. Jungle King became one of the thirteen highest-grossing arcade games of 1983. Bill Kunkel, writing for Electronic Games in early 1983, said it could become Taito's biggest hit since Space Invaders, following the classic formula of easy to learn, difficult to master, though he noted it did not hold up for extended periods and called the vine-swinging graphics "downright hideous". Raymond Dimetrosky of Video Games Player rated the Atari VCS version a B+, calling it quite good given the system's limitations. William Michael Brown rated the Atari 5200 port a 3 out of 4 in Electronic Fun with Computers & Games, calling it a significant improvement over the VCS version. Jungle Hunt received a Certificate of Merit for Best Adventure Videogame at the 5th annual Arkie Awards in January 1984.

Legacy

In November 1982, Taito put out a new arcade version called Pirate Pete, which played the same but swapped the explorer for a pirate, vines for ropes on a ship's masts, crocodiles for sharks, and cannibals for sword-wielding pirates. A 1983 board game from Milton Bradley made ropes a central part of Jungle Hunt. Jungle Hunt later appeared in the Taito Legends collection on Windows, PlayStation 2, and Xbox. For reasons unknown, Taito's later releases only feature Pirate Pete, and Hamster Corporation brought that version to Arcade Archives on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 in June 2021.