Amiga 500 Longplay [217] Jungle Jim
133http://www.longplays.org
Played by: Ironclaw
Release year: 1992
Yeah, a Pac-Man clone.
Oh man, what a grind. Was close to giving up almost every level after 30. The enemies started moving faster and faster, and the duration of the bananas and weapon (before it despawns) got shorter and shorter. In the beginning it was pretty easy to complete the levels as you could take a banana and have like 10 seconds to chase down the enemies to kill them, but after level 30 or so it was stupidly hard. The bananas and weapon lasted like 1 sec, the enemies ran faster than you, so you couldn't chase them down after taking a banana, or outrun them if they decided to come after you.
So repetitive and boring. Same graphics and music throughout the whole game (not counting the title screen). I was thinking they maybe change the gfx and music every 10 levels, but nope.
Many levels have stupid design, which traps you from the start, IF an enemy decides to come your way. There's long one-way paths which you must go to get the coins, but then also go BACK, so if an enemy decided to enter the path, you're screwed. There was usually a banana at the end of these paths, but they were to 0 use, as they only lasted a second, and even if you took one a millisecond before an enemy reached you, you still wouldn't be able to touch the enemy as they ran as soon as you take one, and they are faster than you (in later levels that is).
This game was totally not fully playtested, or they would have discovered how unfairly difficult it would get. I'm sure no one has completed this game without some form of cheat. I used savestates, which is allowed in the longplays/speedrun communities, but even with those it was almost impossible. Took days, as I went back and forth (needed the breaks from frustration). Like I said before, was close to giving up many times. I'm sure you can't complete this game even if you start with 100 lives. On some levels I could easily lose 20 lives.
The way they go seem to have something to do with how you move the player. For example, There could be an enemy going left and coming up to an intersection of a path leading up and down, while I might be walking right, if I save the game and load, he takes the upward path every time, but if I load and decide to move in another direction, there's a chance he change his direction. Sometimes I had to stop and wiggle the joystick to get some of them to change their direction. I could be pressing down towards a wall, without moving anywhere as there's a wall there, and it still sometimes would affect the enemies. At some levels I was surrounded and died like 10 times before I managed to make them change their paths, as just one of them changing wasn't enough, as most of them were coming for me. If their paths couldn't have been controlled like this, the game would have been even harder. Again, if I didn't move, or just moved the same direction every time, they too would move in the same direction, so it's not random. Guess their pathfinding code gets confused or something. Oh well...
You seem to get an extra life every 20k points.
I noticed at 44:46 that the bananas also needs to be taken for the exit to appear, thought at first it was just the coins.
Level 23 at 00:38:12 says "Too DREAM"
Level 30 at 00:50:15 says "AMIGA".
Level 50 at 01:25:48 says "THE END"
These are probably just coincidences, as it doesn't look like the stuff THAT much, but at 00:10:43 it looks like "JiM" or "JiMeY", probably not intended, as they are not complete. Could for example have used a line in the middle of the "y" (a couple in "E" as well). 00:06:32 kinda looks like a face.
An "extras" video, showing the level editor and a couple of other things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Spv_oLnoTIg
At first I had this "extras" part at the end of the longplay, but during cropping I noticed the editor is 512p in height, so excluded it as I didn't want the whole movie to have loads of black space above and below. -
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