Games of the Abstract: Let's Go Jungle! - Lost on the Island of Spice (2006)

 

Publisher: Sega

Developer: Sega

Two Player

Arcade

There are many arcade machines in existence, and if you are a company like Sega, who dominated the arcades since the eighties, you will have countless titles including those never ported to home consoles. This also means these titles can be forgotten or lost, or simply not easy to access if you are not near an arcade, which are not types of entertainment centre you may find everywhere. I look to how the closest to my region in my childhood, the seaside, were once places which had a lot of arcade machines in my youth in the nineties, but switched to a lot of machines that you win tickets for prizes from decades later, where baring one or two you may not find a lot of the arcade machines including the larger gimmick titles (racing cabinets and shooters) on display.

Thankfully, there has been resurgence in arcades, including those which are Free-to-Play, where I was able to play Let's Go Jungle and, for a cost of entry instead, the games do not need to be fed coins to continue on through them. This title is an obscure one as, Sega having made many light gun games alone over the years, and those like this requiring a full cabinet. This has the full shebang with two machine gun attachments which requires space. A gimmick game as a result, this is also from the date of its first premiere, 2006, a late era console. One after Sega sadly had to bow out of the hardware and console industry, but where some of their old magic appears.

A dysfunctional couple, a young man Ben and a young woman named Norah, are on vacation on an island clearly meant to represent Thailand, which we will get to later. With a little set-up, you are immediately thrown into a rampaging horde of giant spiders charging your tour jeep in the jungle, and even as someone without arachnophobia, I have to admit good job to the develops for reminding me that, whilst tiny spiders running around my home are a friendly visitor, for some people insects are so alien that seeing them this large even in this playful "Sega blue skies" tone shows why phobias exist. You eventually get giant frogs and a giant carnivorous plant, but as you go through hordes of mostly insect enemies - giant millipedes rolling in giant balls to worms - Sega missed a trick not acquiring Starship Troopers as a license, or making their own creepy insect shooter game loosely based on the same idea.

You have to clear through said hordes through the machine guns, similar to me to the Sega military game Behind Enemy Lines (1998), with the guns themselves sturdy and heavy enough that, with recoil built in for the rapid fire, they requiring negotiating around where you are aiming as much as hitting the targets. Also openly admitting trying this with Behind Enemy Lines, an attempt to weld both as a lark would probably be as inconvenient as it would be ridiculous unless you had the wrist strength. Thankfully whilst the game is designed as a two player, this even with tinier enemies in some cases (from hordes of flies and even butterflies) structures itself around waves where, keeping an eye on patterns and which enemy will move first, you can both get on top of them before they even can attack or make sure to keep on top of them. As long as you remember to move the gun slightly, for waves to get the entire line one-after-another, a skill can be learnt in recognising the patterns over multiple plays.

There is no real plot barring that, taking a fifties b-movie premise, the island is overrun by giant insects, only rather than nuclear radiation it is revealed to be caused by ill advised experiments with fungus and chemical manipulation. The game is quite short - three main levels, a fourth finale where, escaping the island, you get a memorable conclusion against a giant butterfly. The game also lets the players chose which second level they have, to choose one of two, one in the swamp with giant frogs, one in caves with giant maggots and sliding in one section shooting stalactites out of the way. Both Level 2s take away your standard weapons for two brief alternatives, either whacking giant frogs with boat paddles, or fighting off giant spiders with a slingshot, requiring timing your shots/blows more carefully. Additionally, there is a giant button in the centre of the main console, between the light guns, which must be button bashed for certain events, or hit at the right time for others in cinematic sequences.

Beyond this, it is simplistic. It represents the old gasp of Sega, even getting Daytona USA composer Takenobu Mitsuyoshi to write the music. It does present a whole issue, even in the mid-2000s, of exoticism and stereotypes even among the lovable Sega eccentricity. Namely that it is set in Thailand as an exotic location even for Japanese players, where even if it has the premise (as revealed) of the first world exploitation the Asian country, it is just the location and the Thai alphabetical aesthetic which is used. Thailand (or its vague stand-in) is just a location for giant spiders for Western leads to fight off. One boy, who you save the elephant of to get a ride, is the only real side character from the location. Everyone else is either a tour guide who is eaten or, in the Cave section, is a bystander runs off with your machine guns. This has to be based in mind with many games, and a friendly reminder that cultural appropriation is not just a concern with Western media to ponder, even if this is not an extreme example.

Beyond that one issue to ponder, Let's Go Jungle is fun. Honestly, it is a minor game for me just in terms of what you get. But from the little I have experienced from Sega, they have a magic to their work which this has a little of, and as a result, I cannot dismiss it. The time from when it was made, makes this have a tinge of nostalgia to it as a result, one which would be success. That Let's Go Jungle did get a sequel, and a curious spin-off based on the Transformers film license called Transformers: Human Alliance (2013). Whether a game like this ever got a wider access beyond arcades is to be debated, but thankfully, I was able to play this as intended, and appreciate an example of Sega in an environment where they were kings.