Alright, Today I'm doing a review on a game for the Nintendo Entertainment System called Jackal. This is a game which places you in the middle of a rescue operation to rescue your allies who have been captured by your enemies. I only played this game in order to make a review for it in order to win a competition.. But after starting up and playing a few seconds of this game I was hooked, I honestly mean that too, There are several reason I like this game as much as I do.. But there are also a few things that did bug me about the game and I'm going to go ahead and start my review now in order to show them to you. Enjoy
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Graphic: Alright, This is actually the area of the game where I have most of my issues, I'm taking into consideration that it's an old game for an even older system, But I still have a couple problems here.. Like the fact your Jeep's wheels don't move, Or the fact that there is next to no detail on the enemy soldiers.. And seeing as they are all supposed to be snipers... They have some pretty big bullets, Where can I get a gun like that? And the entire floor on most of the levels seems like the same color simply repeated and covered over with some obstacles. But enough of the negative, Let's focus on what I actually like about this game for a moment.

While I have my problems with the graphics, It's also surprisingly good considering this is still a NES game and game designers didn't have as much available to them at the time and there are some things that are still surprisingly detailed, Like the enemy tanks.. Or those weird head statues that re appear, Or the grenades you start out with, You can tell that people actually tried to do well when this game was designed. One thing I noticed is that the game reminded me a lot of Contra (Same designers I know.) Visually, And that's something I can't say I mind in the slightest. My score... 6. 

Sound: Both sound effects and the music of this game are pretty enjoyable, I'm going to go ahead and start with the music first being the music junkie that I am.. Anyway, The music in this game is just awesome, I'm not sure how to explain it honestly, As amazing as the soundtrack is it's actually really short and does play in a loop that some might see as a little annoying, But honestly it never got boring to me and I enjoyed the thing from start to end. I can actually link the soundtrack here for those who want to hear it, The whole thing is only 5 minutes long though. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6vDhqDCi68 

As for the sound effects of this game, Well.. While they aren't that realistic I just simply can't blame that... First off, It's a game and we don't need actual explosions and gunfire left and right, That stuff isn't good for anyone honestly, It makes you irritated, Grouchy and all around frustrated. But I need to get back on track with this. The sound affects in this game are pretty catchy while still applying the desired effects such as... Boom! Bada bada bada etc... Overall I actually really like the sound of this game. My score...8. 

Addictiveness: For the past two days I've been playing this game, And by looking at the comments on the game you see that Jordanv78 (A Global moderator at this time in case you read this later or did not know.) said this "This game is a shooter, made by Konami. 'Nuff said. Fun game. I still love playing it even though I've beaten it like a million times over the years." That being said, The thing that keeps me playing is the game-play, It's fun, Challenging, And most of all just plain addicting, Want a better explanation as to why it's so addicting? Why not try it out for yourself and then ask yourself why you like to play it. (Assuming you like the game.) My score... 10. 

Story: Yay! Story time! Alright, I'm not sure this game has that much of a story, It's possible it's been told elsewhere or that I'm clearly missing something but this story is pretty straight forward and is basically just game-play as far as I know. (Still avoiding spoilers.) While it's pretty bland (As far as I know.) there is still a lot of potential with the base that we have with it, I could make a half decent fan fiction of this game even. (Good idea.) And hey, Maybe the designers had a huge story no one ever got to know about simply due to the NES's capabilities. But in the end there is nothing I can do but speculate here, My score... 4.

Depth: Well... Let me write for a moment while I think about this.. There honestly isn't much depth to it when it comes to story and there isn't much side stuff to do other than the hidden power ups and those weird star things I found (Unless I have more to discover and don't know it yet.) All in all there isn't too much to say here. My score... 5.

Difficulty: This game is interesting when it comes down to mechanics, You can get hit once before you die.. No exceptions, Some enemies are harder to take down than others while some enemies are just as weak as you if not weaker. The one thing you do have on your side though is mobility and the fact that you always fire your normal gun straight up, This allows you to run circles around your enemies while blasting a tank in front of you while also shooting that pesky turret on your left.

Here's the catch, While you have good mobility and some decent firepower inspite of your low endurance, There will be bullets and rockets everywhere, I mean three turrets shooting at you while 20 soldiers move in and a tank and two jeeps provide fire support for the jet trying to blast you from the sky, This game is straight up hard, There are people coming at you from everywhere.. And maybe not in the first couple levels, But three and onward is just a suicide mission. In order to beat this game you need focus, Control, A quick thinking mind, And a lot of skill. But the difficulty is what really makes it hard, I'm a pretty good gamer in most genre's but I have yet to beat this game myself to be entirely honest, And that's saying something right there. My score...9. (Yes, there are still harder games out there.)

Overall: Alright, Time to wrap up this review, There isn't too much I didn't mention before so I'm going to make sure to add other things that weren't worth mentioning in the other areas of the review here, Such as the multi-player or the fact that game-play can get a little bit repetitive you focus too much on the game-play and just don't allow yourself to be entranced in the game itself. Or maybe the fact that when there are no enemies to kill it feels like you're three times slower.

But all in all this game is still really fun to play and I had a good time playing it myself, With the addicting game-play, The awesome difficulty, The awesome story I made up in my head while playing this and the music that kept me going through all of it. My score... 8.5.'

Well, That's it for my review on this game, I hope you enjoyed it and I hope even more so that you'll give this game a try in order to experience it first hand as I and the others who have played this game (Jordan for instance.) have< Enjoy yourself and have a good day.

Jordanv78 : I wanted to apologize for not asking permission for quoting you in this review and make sure that I'm not trying to steal credit or anything but simply using your words on this game to explain my point, And give you a chance to read this if you wanted to for any reason even if only to see yourself quoted.

Frodlex : No problem at all. Although in the future, if you wish to quote me on a game (which I am more than happy to do) shoot me a PM and ask me for any quotes, or thoughts on the game. I don't mind adding insight at all.

As far as the review goes, you did a good job. I enjoyed reading it.

Some thoughts I had on what you said:

Scale was always a problem with games back then, not just NES but this was a problem all the way up until the xbox/ps2 days. Some bullets in Contra (NES) where huge as well, but it didn't affect the game play. It's a common occurrence in NES games. Look at TMNT (NES) for example. The turtle is like half as tall as the technodrome. Doesn't really affect game play and honestly we didn't think about it too much when playing games back in those days.

Again I think this an instance where you confuse two different things with regards to your review...whether you are talking about the game in comparison to todays games, or if you are talking about the game from the perspective of when it was released. This game was released in 1988 and it was ported to many systems other than just the NES. It was a port of an arcade game that was released in 1986...that's why it didn't have a story and honestly many shooters from this time didn't have a story. Reason being is if you were in an arcade putting your quarter in, you didn't care about a story line you just wanted fun exciting game play until you died and your quarter ran out.

The entire game is modeled exactly off of the Arcade game, so any flaws in the arcade game are amplified in the NES version (because obviously 8 bits couldn't compare to the close to 32 bits a lot of arcade cabs were using at the time.

I thought they did a good job with the port. Certainly better than most of the ports on other systems. check out the arcade game yourself and see

https://www.vizzed.com/play/jackal-(world)-mame-online-arcade-49848-game

Keep up the good work on the reviews.