Jawbreaker

Also known as: N/A

Developer: Tigervision

Honestly, Jawbreaker isn't a terrible game; it just feels like a poor clone of an excellent one. Like many video games of the early '80s, Jawbreaker attempts to emulate the success of Pac-Man by presenting a twist to the formula. In Jawbreaker, instead of having a maze-like stage to traverse to collect pellets and power-ups, Jawbreaker's stages are basically just multiple levels of the area with breaks in each level to allow you to move up and down in an effort to avoid the enemies on stage. The pellets here are supposed to be candy bars, and the enemies are "happy faces" because you should ALWAYS hate any happy face you see. What are those jerks smiling about anyway? I guess that’s why this is called Jawbreaker. They want you to break their jaws so they can’t smile anymore. Anyway, the gameplay itself is okay for what it is. It's not rotten or anything; it's just passable and not really anything more than that. If you're a fan of games similar to Pac-Man, then you may appreciate Jawbreaker for what it is. If Pac-Man isn't your cup of tea, then Jawbreaker probably won't be able to win you over either.

Review added: 12/18/2023

Jungle Hunt

Also known as: N/A

Developer: Atari

Jungle Hunt often gets compared to Activision’s Pitfall!, but I think that folks who make the comparison are simply looking at the boxart or comparing the jungle settings of the game, because both games play very differently from each other. Jungle Hunt is split into three levels - swinging from vine to vine, swimming while avoiding alligators, and running and jumping over what I always assumed to be logs rolling towards you. The controls are tight and the three-level variety, seen in many arcade games at the time, helped prevent this from getting tedious too quickly. It also helps that all three levels are well done and enjoyable to play through. Jungle Hunt was an amazing game for its time, still enjoyable today, and one of the best games Atari released near the end of the 2600's original lifespan. If it was designed to be Atari’s version of Pitfall!, like some folks believe, then it failed…but that failure still resulted in a very, very good game.

Review added: 09/24/2019