J.J. and Jeff

~ J.J. & JEFF ~

Hudson Soft / NEC

HuCard

1990

This game plays like crap compared to many other similar efforts. While New Adventure Island hands you a variety of weapons to toss at your foes, J.J. gives you a short-range, imprecise little kick attack. Its action falls WAY short of NAI's continual fast-paced play and breathless pacing, as you're constantly halting to kick stupid things and receive worthless hints. The auxiliary spray can is unwieldy and mostly useless; and the stages are boring, uninspired exercises in basic platforming that repeatedly subject you to awful attempts at comedy.

J.J. fans love this sequence, which has the hero leap from bee to bee in order to avoid a fiery death. It's about as tricky as the game gets with its platforming.

It not only plays terribly, but it looks AWFUL as well. The backdrops are flat, simplistic, ugly, mega-redundant, and practically colorless compared to those sported by plenty of similar platformers. Many of the sub-stages look pretty much the same as one another, with an occasional dull-color swap if you're really lucky. People actually make a huge fuss over some of the sprites being "large"... Big deal. The only one that shows any creativity on the part of its creator is a dragon thing with a really long neck and tiny body.

All of the bosses are basically the same. Kick 'em in the head while dodging the rocks they toss at you.

The music is also poor. Some people love it, apparently, but I sure don't, and it doesn't help that the same couple tunes get used over... and over... and over... and over... and so on. Man, I don't care if we're talking about tracks that are the caliber of "Last Moment of the Dark" (and we certainly are not); I still don't want to hear them this many times. The sound effects are annoying too, particularly the "screeching to a halt" business and the low-energy alert.

Perhaps the worst aspect of the whole terrible affair is the ridiculous "key" system. Each stage is split into four sub-levels, and you need to find a hidden key (basically by kicking anywhere and everywhere) to fight the boss who resides at the end of the fourth. If you reach that fourth sub-stage but missed the key, you have to go back to an earlier area and search for it again, and then replay the parts leading up to where you were. It's an awful, awful system, so let me save you some trouble. Here are the general locations where the keys can be found:

As for the game's "saving grace," the "comedy," I guess I'm a sour old man, because plummeting poop and "wonk wonk" dialogue do not amuse me (and no, I do not find that the additional filth in the original Kato & Ken helps matters much). In fact, nothing in this game amuses me. It's one of the worst titles I own for the Turbo/PCE.