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Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Atari 5200 and Commodore 64 Jungle Hunt Review

Counting the Atari releases as the same, these three versions of Jungle Hunt are similar enough to review together. All three are competent renditions of the arcade game, and actually all three even have better, or at least more appropriately colored graphics than the original (even the Apple II version, which may not have many colors but at least doesn't boast a palette better suited to an Easter egg than a jungle). At the same time, all three have issues that keep them from replacing the arcade game.

Those issues make for interesting comparisons between the three ports. The Atari systems and the Commodore 64 are built to offer smooth scrolling, and yet it's Apple II Jungle Hunt that has the smoothest animation. The Commodore 64 has the most sophisticated audio hardware, and yet the tunes of its Jungle Hunt sound the most out of tune! The Apple II is notoriously incapable of playing background music in most games, and yet only the Apple II version has the Jungle Hunt background theme... though to be fair, the programmers cheated and turned it into a title theme. Ultimately the Atari version plays the best of the three, with decent speed, good-enough audio and animation that isn't too choppy, and yet it has the most visual quirks, like game graphics that go beyond the borders of the background scenery, making some things seem to hover in mid-air.

Certainly the Commodore and Atari ports could have used a little more polish, but the Apple II version doesn't escape criticism either, playing much more slowly than other AtariSoft efforts like Moon Patrol and Defender. All told, each version still captures enough of the arcade game to satisfy existing fans and maybe earn some new ones. Even so, they all could have been better.