Jungle King / Jungle Hunt

Jungle HuntThe Game: You are the king of the jungle! Swinging from vine to vine! Swimming through crocodile-infested waters! Jumping and ducking huge rolling boulders! And vanquishing spear-weilding natives to rescue the damsel! (Taito, 1982)

Buy this gameMemories: Not that Jungle King was an incredibly simple game – the above description is supposed to be a little bit humorous, if oversimplified – but Jungle King‘s most infamous footnote in video game history is the lawsuit that it drew. The original Jungle King game opened with the sound of a sampled “Tarzan yell” – and the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs was not amused.

Jungle HuntTaito very quickly lost a copyright infringement lawsuit and pulled Jungle King from production, removing the sound sample and replacing the player’s character – who looked a little more like Mowgli from The Jungle Book than Tarzan – with a pith-helmeted, safari-suited explorer. The game reappeared as Jungle Hunt and otherwise remained unchanged.

4 quarters!A pretty decent Atari 2600 adaptation of Jungle Hunt was released, along with a decent version for the Atari 5200. All of the home versions of the game arrived well after the lawsuit forced Taito to retitle the game.

Jungle Hunt Jungle Hunt
Jungle Hunt