Jill of the Jungle

Jill of the Jungle is a trilogy of platformer computer games released in 1992 by Epic MegaGames. It was intended to rival computer games from other shareware companies such as id Software and Apogee Software, Ltd.. The three games in the series were:

• Jill of the Jungle
• Jill of the Jungle 2: Jill Goes Underground
• Jill of the Jungle 3: Jill Saves the Prince

The Good

The main marketing point of Jill of the Jungle was that it was one of few shareware games at the time that supported VGA graphics and fully utilized the 256-color palette. Duke Nukem 2 was released around the same time, however the game appears to be a hasty upconvert of one which was produced originally in 16-color EGA.

Jill of the Jungle supported Sound Blaster PCM sound, Adlib music and VGA graphics, but could run on as little as a 286 with CGA graphics and the internal PC speaker. Jill was also one of the first games capable of saving games at the exact point you left it. This was a major improvement over games which allowed you to save at any point, but sent you back to the previous checkpoint, or possibly back to the beginning of the level, upon restoring the saved game.

The Bad

Although the music soundtrack was complete, one of the main characteristics of Jill of the Jungle was the awkward Sound Blaster sound effects. Many sounds were inappropriate for the action that was occurring. Such sounds included the following:

• A synthesized "Ah!" sound whenever a frog jumps
• A guitar pluck whenever Jill jumps
• A sinister laugh cut off at the beginning when Jill dies
• A scratching vinyl record whenever you attempt to throw a sword without any in inventory
• (Jill 2 only); Deep voice says, "Zog!" when you throw your weapon.

The games also suffered from blocky movement which could make small platform jumping fairly awkward and made the savegame feature very necessary.

Gameplay

Jill of the Jungle is a platform sidescroller which was released during the same time as the Commander Keen and Duke Nukem series of games. You play as an Amazon woman who can use various types of weapons and enhancements as you progress through levels slaying monsters and finding keys. The first game in the series contains 16 levels, each of which can be entered from a main map, in a similar fashion to Super Mario Bros. 3, only slightly more linear. Various puzzles include keys, transforming into different creatures, and proper jump height among others.

Between levels in the shareware version, the player encountered humourous messages that took a swipe at various popular game characters, such as Mario, Commander Keen and Duke Nukem. The messages usually described that they were retiring, due to being unable to compete with Jill.

Despite Jill of the Jungle looking like a weak attempt against the competition of id Software and Apogee, this game provided market recognition and allowed Epic Megagames to produce future titles, such as Jazz Jackrabbit, One Must Fall 2097, and the very successful Unreal series of games.

Links

• DOS Games Archive | Jill of the Jungle