Jackal
Arcade
Nostalgia Factor:
I’ve played and reviewed Jackal for the NES (you can read the review HERE if you are so inclined), but until now I had never played the arcade version of the game. I’m always interested to see how the NES and arcade versions of various games stack up against one another, so I decided to give Jackal a shot. My 1986 game reviews continue (and end) with this game. I’ve decided to speed up the process a little bit, so instead of three games for 1986 I’m only playing two – Rambo for the Master System (my previous review) and this game.
Read on for my thoughts on Jackal!
Story:
This game doesn’t give you anything at all as far as story goes. You’re simply dropped off in the middle of a war zone with little to no fanfare whatsoever. You’re driving a tank, and it is your job to rescue prisoners of war and blow shit up. I guess this game shares a lot of similarities with Rambo, the last game I reviewed. I didn’t even plan that at all!
Gameplay:
At its core, Jackal is very similar to its NES counterpart. You control a tank. Or maybe it’s a Jeep. I don’t know. You can use your machine gun attack to ONLY fire upwards on the screen. You’re going to be using your rockets and missiles a lot more, as they can be aimed in any direction you’d like. Your goal is to move upwards on the screen, which scrolls with you as you move. Mainly you are going to be destroying enemies with your weapons, but you’re also going to be destroying enemy buildings as well. Some of these buildings only give you a points bonus, while others contain P.O.W.s that you can rescue. You can fit up to eight of them in your tank. You have to try and transport all eight of these prisoners to the nearest helipad, where a waiting helicopter whisks them off to safety. If you can manage to unload all eight prisoners in one trip to the helipad, you get an upgrade to your weapons.
Fully upgrading your missiles is an absolute key if you want to have any shot at all at beating this game. Your default missiles, which are really just grenades, only travel a few car lengths in front of you before they explode. They move very slowly, and their blast radius is very small. They can go through walls, however, so they aren’t completely useless. Further upgrades improve the speed and distance of your missiles. What you want to aim for is to get the upgrade that expands your blast radius. When your missile explodes, it sends a shock wave to the left and the right that kills a wide range of enemies. Your final upgrade sends out a blast radius in all directions, which is terrific for clearing difficult areas of enemies with the least amount of resistance possible. One hit kills you in this game, so be very careful. You lose one of your weapon upgrades each time you die, which isn’t ideal.
Unlike the NES game, there are no boss fights to be found here. Instead, the game is essentially one long level. You have to beat this level (and the entire game) on ONE quarter. That’s right, there is no continue function. If you lose all your lives, you have to start over from the very beginning of the game again. This is very annoying. To make matters worse, save states don’t work when you are emulating this title. I tried several different roms and got the same result. Couldn’t even save on my RetroPie either! This makes the game virtually impossible if you are playing single player mode. There is a “hack” or workaround for this problem, and that involves hooking up a second controller and pressing the start button to jump in with a second player right as your first player is about to die. For some reason, you can do this as many times as you want to as you make your way through the game. Why you get unlimited continues in two-player mode but none in single player mode is beyond me. It’s all kind of a moot point, though, because once you reach a certain point of the game you can’t jump in with a second player anymore, and you have to try and beat the game with whatever lives and weapons you still have remaining. This makes Jackal an absolutely brutal challenge to complete, but I suffered through this game night after night until I finally made it happen.
I say “suffered through” but I actually had a really good time with Jackal. Unlike the NES game, which has virtually no replay value whatsoever, the arcade version of the game kept me coming back and back and back for more. You could say that this was only the case because of its broken continue system and brutally unfair difficulty level, but I still managed to have a good time with this game. I still think the NES version is the more fun game, but like I said I still had a good time.
What makes Jackal so difficult? The enemies. There’s so many of them. They respawn, they act wildly and unpredictably, they fire an endless number of projectiles your way (the phrase bullet hell comes to mind) and worst of all: they have this habit of just suddenly appearing on the edge of the screen and killing you before you have a chance to react to them. Let’s say I’m rolling forward in my tank/Jeep thingamabobber and I see that there’s something in the water up ahead that is launching missiles at me. I’ll back up in my vehicle to give myself some room to breathe, when a tank suddenly appears off the bottom of the screen and kills me instantly. This kind of thing will happen to you A LOT as you play this game, and it will piss you off each and every time. What makes this so bad is that it takes away one of your missile upgrades. You also can’t continue in this game, so that’s one very very precious life that you’ve just lost.
Another annoying thing about this game is how when you destroy an enemy vehicle, its explosion animation will kill you. It took me quite a while to adjust to this. I am used to playing games where I can just blow something up and keep moving along. In this game, you have to sit there for several seconds, wait for the explosion animation to end, and then continue on your way. If an enemy appears from the edge of the screen behind you when you’re sitting there waiting – good luck to you. I can’t tell you how many times I just rolled right into an enemy explosion (out of force of habit from other video games) only to be like GOD DAMN IT when the explosion killed me. Very, very annoying.
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Graphics:
This version of Jackal is definitely a step up from the NES version in terms of graphics. Even though the game is one big level, the makers of the game did a nice job breaking up that long level into several very distinct looking sectors. You’ve got a beach area, a military base, a mountain range, some nice big rivers and bodies of water that you drive by. The animations are nice. The game is very colorful and full of life. Very impressive by 1986’s standards.
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Sound:
I actually have to give the NES version the edge when it comes to soundtrack. It just has a very classic retro feel to it. I still remember the little jingle that plays at the end of each level. This game has a good soundtrack too, but in my opinion it is not anywhere as memorable. The sounds of weapons and explosions are nice, but again – nothing too memorable.
Overall:
There are a lot of really good reasons why I shouldn’t like this game. There are no continues. You have to beat it on one quarter (or use the two-player cheat). Enemies are cheap, acting unpredictably and often appearing on the edge of the screen to send you to an unceremonious and frustrating death. They will randomly respawn, too, with little to no rhyme or reason whatsoever. When you destroy an enemy, its explosion animation will kill you. And also, save states don’t work. WHY???
I can’t really hold the save state thing against the game, but I think my other criticisms are pretty valid. That said, I still really liked this game.
The more it challenged me and the more it killed me, the more obsessed I became with beating this game. There’s no time limit. You can move as slowly and as cautiously as you’d like. Every single attempt when I’d fall short, I’d learn something new that I’d incorporate into my next playthrough. The game looks good. It sounds good. It’s fun to play. I like the concept. I like how you can level up your weapons. I like a lot about the game.
I’d say that so far it is one of the better games I’ve played in recent memory, right up there with Rambo. No, it's not as good as the NES version of the game, but it is different enough to allow me to forgive that.
With that, we close the door on 1986. Four year old Dan waves goodbye as we move onto 1987. I’ve already played three games from 87 already, it’s just a matter of me finding the time to write those reviews. Hope you’re enjoying my little project so far. I know I am!
THE GRADE:
B
1984:
1985:
1986:
and the one you're reading:
Jackal
Up next: 1987's
Black Panther
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