Jungle Strike
Unfinished game #8
Type of Game
A fun bumper-helicopter simulation, but the fuel management part isn't fun at all.
Release date on our machines
July or August 1993, halfway between Choplifter and G-Police.
Developer
Electronic Arts, Inc., Granite Bay Software—the first one we know, the second… um, worked on all the Strike games except the latest one. It didn’t exist before, and it disappeared right after. What a strange fate.
Publisher
Electronic Arts, Inc. clearly in its golden age.
Jungle Strike: Available on absolutely nothing! The most recent port is for… the BlackBerry? Oh yeah, maybe there was a better choice. Is that even true? Because if not, you have to go all the way back to the PSP.
I didn’t know about Desert Strike when I was given Jungle Strike. Or when I had someone buy it for me, or when I found it on the floor of a supermarket—whatever. Still, the box was practically screaming at me that I should have. “THE SEQUEL TO DESERT STRIKE” written in big black capital letters on a yellow ribbon. Just like the police tape cordoning off a crime scene. OK! Sorry, guys, I’m eight years old—I live on Lucky Charms and breaded chicken cutlets, not in the same meal, but still. No mercy from Electronic Arts. I didn’t discover the first game in the series until much later, on my cousin Walter Valise’s Game Gear, during a summer vacation when all we talked about was Command & Conquer. Man, that guy actually had a Game Gear. But didn’t he constantly bash SEGA? I think he did. Hey, Walter! Your game didn’t move me one bit! Got it? Anyway, Jungle Strike kept disrespected me during the intro scene (in almost 3D, yo), with the helicopter taking off right in front of the screen and firing missiles at me! Hey, is hit gonna calm down or what? Go ahead, run off through the mangroves—you’re right to do so. Even after that rather turbulent encounter, I was hooked right away. I’ve never really been obsessed with helicopters, despite having a friend named Lionel Mortadelle, whose dad was a pilot and who talked about nothing else. Even though we used to watch Airwolf together, too.
Surprising affinities
It’s really weird that he never played Jungle Strike with me. Besides, I’ve never really been into driving things in games either. Yet Jungle Strike managed to get me hooked on both, and I’ll never regret having discovered that game first, rather than the one before it (or the one after it, Urban Strike, for that matter). On the other hand, it gave me a really hard time—so much so that I couldn’t finish it, even after trying over and over again. I kept coming back to it, even when the Mega Drive was losing its luster with the arrival of the Pentium 75 “bulldozer” at home. But it just wasn’t working.
Go tank yourself
I was never able to finish it for two reasons. First, I didn’t understand a word of English. I could roughly guess what I was supposed to do thanks to the map showing the entire layout of each level, the locations of all the objectives, and the spots where I could pick up ammo or gas. That map was really well done, by the way. It let me get much further than I ever thought I would. The second reason has to do with fuel, actually. I like the idea of having to manage your fuel to stay operational. But not here. Our helicopter guzzles fuel at an incredible rate! Who came up with the idea of taking this little propeller-driven thing on missions across South America? So, the only real criticism I have of this game is that it forces us to go hunting for fuel barrels instead of letting us just blast our targets in peace. Because once the tank’s empty, we crash and die—period. Couldn’t we just land and hitch a ride? Get a guerrillero—who we’ll shoot up later—to drive us to the nearest gas station? Or just get rid of this feature that only serves to throw a wrench in our rotors, right?
Maybe I was going too slow, too—I’m not exactly the fastest at, um… a whole lot of things. But let me enjoy the scenery a little! There are tons of things to admire, too! Destroying drug traffickers’ camps is something to savor. Plus, the trees in there are indestructible. No danger of destroying the flora and fauna. Even if we’re guzzling ten liters of fuel a minute, we’re still eco-friendly at heart. So I learn that we’re picking up the story where Desert Strike left off. We defeat a horrible terrorist from the Gulf who wanted to destroy the world. Except—bad luck! His son is just as crazy as he was, and teams up with the worst drug lord in the Amazon to try to take over the planet himself. So here we go again, aboard a brand-new Comanche—one that’s clearly not quite real. Here, we play the archetypal cool guy from the ’90s—super strong, super laid-back—who takes everything in stride, including the end of the world, but we know he’ll succeed at everything he sets out to do with ease.
This really contributes to the game’s atmosphere, which is both very tense (due to its missions and what’s at stake) and very lighthearted (thanks to its dialogue). I was immediately won over by the isometric 3D top-down perspective, which I’ve loved ever since Populous and Toejam & Earl. I think a purely vertical, horizontal, or other kind of Jungle Strike would have had me giving up at the first fuel shortage. So thanks to my obsession with pseudo-3D isometric pixel art. Plus, this game turns out to be way more dynamic than the aforementioned god game, and waaaay more playable than that… weird action-exploration thing with alien rappers. Seriously, the controls blew me away. Once you get a handle on your craft’s inertia, you can make it take crazy trajectories, pull off sudden U-turns, and perform other maneuvers that would be completely impossible with a real helicopter. I’ve never flown one, but a little common sense is enough to get the idea.
Just goes to show, a lack of realism can lead to some awesome stuff! So why did they go so overboard with that kerosene consumption?? F***ing B****, C*****, and F***** his M*******! That said, even though it was denting my fuselage all over the place, I found it absolutely fascinating to crash into buildings. The helicopter would spin backward in a series of circles, sounding like a big spring wrapped in bouncing balls. It always reminded me of a bumper car getting rammed around at a carnival. So of course I found it fun. Each of the nine levels offers a range of objectives to complete before moving on to the next one. While some must be completed in a specific order to unlock the next stage, most can be tackled however you like—one after another or even a few at a time. It’s up to us. Kill a villain, save a good guy, retrieve cargo, destroy booby-trapped convoys, kill more villains, free hostages, take down a really bad guy protected by ten tanks…
It’s not exactly groundbreaking, but the subtle differences between missions are enough to keep us from getting bored. This is also thanks to a fairly simple yet effective level design. While the levels aren’t spread out over areas as vast as I imagined when I was a kid, I still found it very enjoyable to make my way through them to kill Villain 1, then Villain 2, and so on. I found the levels well-filled, with nothing superfluous and not too many empty spaces. Trucks driving by, boats sailing along, crazed enemies shooting at you on sight without even trying to hide a little bit, other flying vehicles too, and even some ultra-menacing cannon batteries that you’re better off avoiding. All of this is interspersed with trees, civilian buildings, and various infrastructure. Plus, I think it looks pretty nice, even today. Finally, you can choose a co-pilot before each game starts. I imagine that must grant various bonuses depending on who you choose. I didn’t pay much attention to it, since I didn’t understand any of it.
Too bad—there’s bound to be at least one person in the bunch who knows how to use less gas. On the box, the game promises completely revamped gameplay thanks to the introduction of new vehicles. Awesome! I never got to experience the days when the helicopter was the only vehicle you could fly. Starting in the second level, you ditch the Comanche to hop into a hovercraft armed to the teeth! Well, up to the air cushions, anyway. What’s the difference, really? You lay mines instead of firing those massive Hellfire rockets. The handling remains similar, except that now you hit every obstacle—not just buildings four meters or taller; even a small pebble sticking out of the grass sends you flying thirty meters backward and costs you a tenth of your health (I’m saying this from memory, but who’s going to check?). Great update to the mechanics! Well, at least we actually feel like a real bumper car now. Still, I really enjoyed this stage, which takes place almost entirely on water.
Especially that huge submarine you have to blow up at the end, which really played on my phobia of big things that float. Third, you head deep into the jungle (it was about time to live up to the title!) to take down a really well-stocked training camp. I got my butt kicked so many times out there, but I managed to drag my skids all the way to the next level. And yeah, the landing gear on a helicopter is called “skids.” We’re back in the jungle again, but at night. You can’t see a thing until you blow something up. Aren’t they subtly asking us to blow stuff up? But oh, just so we can find our way around, right? Strangely enough, I don’t remember this part at all. How did I even get through it? I do remember the next level, though! Well, mostly I remember getting stuck on it—specifically, a small town in Peru or Bolivia at the mercy of cruel paramilitaries. After that, nothing else. I was always running out of gas because I’d drain all the available fuel before finishing the missions. And there, even with the help of the map, I never knew what to do. Stupid, gas-guzzling chopper.
So what did I miss? All the other vehicles we get to drive, for starters! When do we actually get to see them, seriously? Well, the motorcycle shows up in the level I’ve never finished. I always died before I could get to it, apparently. But it lasts… maybe three minutes??? Come on, guys! Oh! What’s the point? Deployment Zone 6 is set in the snow, with some pretty unique sprites depicting hideouts and underground passages of a fortress buried beneath the ground. The Stealth Fighter FINALLY shows up for the slew of missions that follow. Man, I really wanted to fly that thing. I was drooling over the tiny screenshot on the back of the box. And I never got to get my hands on the stick of that beautiful beast (if you’re picturing wierd stuff in your head while reading this, that’s on you). Plus, we get to fly it for more than half the level—thanks a lot! Well, it actually seems like a pain to steer. Like the helicopter, but even more of a hassle, since it needs twenty kilometers of runway to take off. The developers do promise us something new. They just forgot to specify that it’s something new that’s incredibly tedious and a total killjoy. Clever little devils.
The Ride of the Electric Guitars
The music comes from a guy named Brian Schmidt. Haha! A guy with a German name composing for a war game—that made me laugh. Sorry. It’s not really funny; I just thought of Wagner and Apocalypse Now, and… yeah, sorry for all those problematic comparisons. I hadn’t really noticed the quality of the tracks back then. Today, they’re among my favorite titles in the MD. The guy really pulled off a masterstroke, I think. It sounds hard, loud, and dark all at once. But it also conveys an insane amount of energy. I think it takes a little while to get used to the '"“electric guitar”" riffs—with four quotation marks—if you don’t know what to expect. Once you get past the initial shock and your soul returns to your body, it’s an absolute blast. And yet… there’s no music playing during the gameplay itself! It’s only used for the intro, mission briefings, game overs, credits, and victory screens. Maybe that’s why I love it so much after having almost forgotten about it. That sparing use of sound—as if they were sharing an ultra-precious resource with us (even more precious than that damn gas)—really worked on me. Yeah, maybe I would’ve liked it even better with music during the levels—I don’t know! I’m trying to see the gas tank as half full. Still, with an intro like that, I was pumped for the six hours ahead. And I started chanting American patriotic slogans, too. Thank goodness we’re talking about the Clinton mandate, and not the Bush or Trump eras—oh my God.
Comanche and Conquer
As for the levels, yeah, I really would have loved to explore them all, along with the missions that go with their briefings. I loved those graphics so much—you could have easily imagined a management game with all those different buildings, settings, and structures! Create your own narco-terrorist camp, kid! Hide some plutonium next to the White House just to see what happens! Hours of fun guaranteed! The playable vehicles, on the other hand… hmmmpff, no, I don’t really have any regrets. That feature borders on false advertising, especially when it’s used so heavily as a selling point. I would have loved to drive the bad guys’ tanks, though, or those autonomous train cars from the first level. Or the huge submarine, and, if nothing else, that armored UN vehicle.
I think things improved a bit in Urban Strike, released the following year, even though what I saw of the on-foot sections struck me as downright hilarious. While I loved Jungle Strike on the Mega Drive, I think I would have liked the PC version even more, with its cutscenes that really go all out on self-deprecating humor. Release year: 1995. It reminds me of a certain Command & Conquer, come to think of it. Two games that manage to make war feel fresh and funny. Quite a feat. Mind you, we also get dialogue scenes on my beloved console—in near-static images that look pretty rough by today’s standards, but have undeniable timeless charm. With really funny dialogue, and even Bill Clinton making a guest appearance. Too bad I didn’t really get it back then—I would’ve loved it even more. Or maybe it’s actually better that I didn’t love it too much. Where would I be today, otherwise? Stealing gas to pay for endless rides on the bumper cars? No, thanks.
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