Jungle Patrol is a side-scrolling action game that is so easy, I could play it for hours. With the emphasis on could, because there are better things one can spend their time on. Like, for instance, writing a blog post about this game!
There is a lot of information crammed into this one screen: There's the title at the top, the score & hi-score to the left and right, two indicators for shield and fuel plus the scrolling playfield below, and the copyright at the bottom, visible at all times.
Before I start the game, I want to tell you Jungle Patrol's backstory, which can be read in the games section of Game On's diskmag. It is rather insane, and I have the sneaking suspicion that it sprung from the mind of one of Game On's editors, and not the game's original author. Especially because it is decidedly German, for lack of a better description. But read for yourself:
Herr Norbert just finished work for the week and is driving homewards in his newly acquired off-road vehicle. Due to a closed road, he has to take a detour which leads right through a jungle. Lucky for him, his car is equipped with limited levitation technology that allows him to jump over obstacles. He also carries an unlimited supply of hand grenades with him (who doesn't in this day and age?), which he can throw to get rid of anything lying in his way.
A nearby farmer, irritated by Herr Norbert's reckless driving, sends his flying battle droids "Keim" and "Gabel" after him. The mechanical monsters hover above Herr Norbert's car and occasionally throw down bombs.
What's more, driving through the wilderness depletes the fuel tank of Herr Norbert's car very rapidly. He needs to detonate one of the gas canisters on the road with a well-aimed hand grenade from time to time. Because that's how you fuel up in Jungle Patrol.
So much for the gripping backstory. I can already tell you that this won't be the last game where the story was just made up by CP Verlag's editorial staff because the original author didn't provide one.
And we're off! Jungle Patrol is very reminiscent of Irem's 1983 arcade classic Moon Patrol. I mean, the reference is right there in the name.
You can move your off-road vehicle across the left half of the screen, but the scrolling speed always remains the same. The car's wheels wobble about as much as the ones on the buggy in Moon Patrol, even though the road looks perfectly flat. Another mystery that remains unexplained is the complete absence of a driver, aka Herr Norbert. Could it be that the backstory we got is total hogwash? The nerve!
The two battle droids move back and forth and occasionally drop slow projectiles, very similar to the enemies in Moon Patrol, but you can't shoot them down. Evading their shots is your only way to survive.
If you collide with anything, you don't immediately explode, but your shield goes down. It slowly charges back up while you're not getting damaged.
Here are the obstacles you can encounter on the road. To the right are things that look like mines, but they don't explode on touch, so they're probably just roadblocks. To the left is a gas canister which damages you, just like the roadblocks. You need to hit it with a grenade to refill your fuel meter which drains at a slow but constant rate.
The game attempts some pseudo parallax scrolling by having the white particles on the road scroll at different speeds. The effect doesn't work very well, though, because the obstacles move much slower than the particles, which destroys the illusion of a three-dimensional plane.
The jumping acts more like a temporary hover, as your car just elevates in a linear motion and stays aloft for a second before coming back down. You can move freely while in the air which helps a lot to avoid obstacles.
Grenades are thrown at an arc, and learning to predict the spot where a grenade will land is the most important step to becoming good at the game. Here's my ProTip: If you move the car as far right as you can, you can lob a grenade as soon as something scrolls into view from the right, and you're guaranteed to hit it. There is an occasional bug/feature where obstacles that are positioned next to each other all disappear at once, even though your grenade only hit one of them.
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| Look at my Scoore! I'm the Scoorge of the Jungle! |
Once you get used to the controls, the game merely becomes a test of concentration and patience. As far as I can tell, the road goes on forever. There are no stages, and no changes in enemies, scenery, or background music.
Speaking of which, the game's choice of music is rather curious. Let me step back a bit to explain:
Remember that scene in 1987's RoboCop where recently robofied Murphy goes on patrol for the first time and the movie's theme music can be heard in the background? When I saw that scene on TV in 1991, it sent my mind racing, as I desperately tried to figure out where the hell I had heard that melody before.
Guess what, I heard it in Jungle Patrol. While the style and tempo are quite different, it's obviously the same melody. The composer of the SID tune, Klaus "Link" Grøngaard, even named it Robocop, but in the game itself, he's not credited.
I uploaded a video, if you want to have a listen yourself:
I don't know why this was selected as Jungle Patrol's background music. The game is not trying to emulate a scene from the movie, and I don't see much of a connection between the two settings. Oh wait, now I get it! RoboCop goes on patrol in the thicket of Detroit... one could almost say, he goes on - wait for it! - an urban Jungle Patrol. Eh? Eh? Okay, never mind.
CONCLUSION
Jungle Patrol is an easy, not very innovative Moon Patrol variant. The graphics are fine, though they lack variation, and the same can be said for the music which just loops forever.
At the same time, it's quite rare for a C64 game to be on the easy side, and I appreciate playing something that doesn't make me want to tear my hair out after a couple of minutes.
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