Screenshot from the arcade version.
Jungle Hunt is a Side View Arcade Game released by Taito in 1982, and ported to many consoles and computers. It started as a Tarzan game called "Jungle King", but a lawsuit from the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs led to some changes.You play a guy in a safari outfit (a Captain Ersatz of Tarzan) who has to save his girlfriend from cannibals. You journey through four stages. In the first stage, you swing from tree to tree on vines (called "ropes" after the lawsuit). In the second stage, you swim past crocodiles, stabbing them if you want to for extra points. In the third stage, you run uphill while dodging boulders. In the fourth stage, you jump over the cannibals to rescue the girl.
In Brazil, it was released with the original Tarzan graphics and sampled yell.
Jungle King/Jungle Hunt provides examples of:
- Captured by Cannibals: Your girlfriend, and you need to save her before she gets eaten.
- Collision Damage: Crocodiles, boulders, and the cannibals. Crash into them and you die.
- Distressed Damsel: Your girlfriend has been Captured by Cannibals.
- Endless Game: A Smooch of Victory, then off you go again.
- Excuse Plot: Your girlfriend has been kidnapped by cannibals. Save her.
- Guerrilla Boulders: The third stage of every round has these, which the jungle man must jump over or duck under.
- I'm a Humanitarian: The cannibal tribe that captures your girlfriend and wants to eat her.
- Jump Physics: Your man can jump twice his height.
- Jungle Japes: This being the entire theme and setting of the game.
- Jungle Opera: The central theme. Traverse the jungle and save your girlfriend
- Never Smile at a Crocodile: Crocodiles are enemies in the underwater portion.
- New Game Plus: After you win once, new enemies appear: Baboons on the ropes, and a third native throwing spears at you.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: You die in one hit.
- Oxygen Meter: The second stage of each round puts the hero into the river, where it becomes necessary to surface now and then to replenish the meter. Strangely, the large air bubbles rising up from the bottom of the river only serve to push the player to the surface — they do not replenish the oxygen meter.
- Smooch of Victory: The hero gets one of these each time he successfully rescues his girlfriend.
- Stewed Alive: You are trying to save your girlfriend, who is being slowly lowered into a cauldron by a cannibal tribe.
- Timed Mission You have to reach your girlfriend before she gets cooked.
- Under the Sea: The second stage always puts you in a river where the hero attacks crocodiles while swimming and has to watch their oxygen.
- Vine Swing: The first stage of every round features this. At first the vines are bare and the only risk is from missing the next vine. Starting with the second round, however, some of the vines are already occupied by lethal apes.
