Jack Bros. (Virtual Boy) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

Описание: A playthough of Atlus's 1995 action-puzzle game for the Nintendo Virtual Boy, Jack Bros.

Played through as Jack Skelton, known as Jack Ripper in the Japanese version.

Atlus has always been a company to green-light games for release in the west that had a decidedly unique slant to them, and sure enough, the company's sole Virtual Boy venture is no different in that regard.

Jack Bros. is a spin-off of the Megami Tensei series, and in pre-dating Revelations: Persona for the PS1 by over a year, I believe it was actually the first game from the franchise to ever receive an official English release.

It stars a few fan-favorite Megami Tensei stars that gave been hanging out celebrating Halloween in the human world. Having a bit too much fun, they accidentally stay longer than they should have and find themselves with only an hour left to make it back to their own world before the portal closes, meaning that they're pretty much screwed until a fairy appears and offers her help. She can lead them back, but the path back to the fairy world is one filled all sorts of inconvenient dangers.

But so it goes. Have knife, will travel.

Each set of stages is made up of a series of "floors" that they must descend - a bit of a metaphor for the circles of Hell in Dante's The Divine Comedy - and the final floor of each stage features a boss that you have to violently dispose of before moving on.

It's a top-down action game with puzzle elements, and each floor has a set number of keys that you have to collect as you take out enemies and manipulate traps. You can fall down to lower floors by stepping in holes as well, which seems to be the only attempt to use any meaningful 3D in the game. It did look cool, though.

The action isn't terribly exciting, but the control scheme makes it quite a bit of fun. Thanks to the Virtual Boy controllers' dual d-pad setup, the game ends up feeling like a slower, melee-centered take on games like Smash TV.

I really enjoyed this one - it's simple and accessible, the graphics are clean and clear, the music is really well done, and the controls are great. The only complaint I have is that the difficulty level is all over the place. Most of the stages are easy and go by quickly, but the bosses tend to be brick walls. I get bosses are supposed to be challenging, but the game does zero to prepare you for the level of performance it expects during those fights. It doesn't ruin the game, but it does feel like a cheap way to artificially extend its length.

But, Jack Bros. is a fun, cutesy sort of game that filled a necessary hole in the Virtual Boy lineup. It's not a classic, but it is an unassuming, entertaining introduction to the endlessly deep well that is the Megami Tensei franchise, and it does make for a cool novelty game for Halloween.

A word of warning: if you have a Virtual Boy and are considering buying a copy, just know that unless you're a collector, it really doesn't warrant the exorbitant amounts that it tends to sell for.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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