Arcade Flyer Art Saturday: Jungler
I saw this on the front page of TAFA as the featured flyer and I knew this was my pick for this week.
Jungler came on to the arcade scene in Japan circa 1981, a product of Konami that was then licensed to Stern for release in the U.S. in 1982. It was a maze game that was somewhat reminiscent of Centipede, except there are multiple enemies and the player is also a centipede or some sort of segmented creepy crawly thing. Much like Centipede, you earn points by shooting off segments of the opposing "snakes". As the enemies get smaller, they also speed up, roaming around the maze at random, making them harder to hit. Each level contains several dead ends that will eventually stop the enemy in it's tracks, leaving it open for your attacks. But, you have to move quickly or the enemy will explode of it's own accord, giving you no points. You can also earn extra points by picking up various pieces of fruit which will also add length to your snake.
The art on this one has a style all it's own. It continually refers to snakes although the characters are clearly not snakes since they have multiple legs and that weird little crescent moon end on the tail. Despite this obvious flaw, the flyer uses some form of the word snake at least five times. Then, of course there's the words they are actually saying. It doesn't take much to read something into lines like "Man, this is a snake eat snake game" and "I'll shoot off your tail - and then ram you!" If only they had had the person who wrote that working on the Brokeback Mountain script, it would have taken that Best Picture Oscar for sure.
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