Jungle River Cruise Label

PROJECT PUFFER:
- JUNGLE RIVER CRUISE -

  • Jungle River Cruise, designed for the Atari 5200 and 400/800 computers, was originally titled Riverboat and then River Rescue until Atari finally settled on the final name.

    The screen features a third person, overhead view of a paddle boat. The speed of the boat was to be controlled by the operator pedal speed. The sideways control of the boat was dependent upon the speed and the hand controller buttons. The object of the game is to rescue explorers by drifting next to them and picking them up. If the player paddle over them he would be penalized in points. The boat can only hold six explorers and a side view of the boat on the lower third of the screen shows your draft. Delivering the explorers to a dock will lighten your load and bring you a 500 point bonus for each one.

    The screen is split into two sections. The top 3/4 of the viewing area is the playfield, showing the boat in the river from an overhead perspective. The bottom portion of the screen showed the boat from a side angle which served as an indicator of how much the boat was being weighed down by its passengers. The more passengers that were on the boat, the lower the boat was (relative to the water).

    The Atari 5200 version that we tried was also playable with a joystick. The game appeared to be very early in its design stages since predators such as alligators, spear-throwing natives and snakes were not present in the prototype of the game. We also tried mowing down the explorers to see what would happen if the score went under zero. Again, nothing happened -- your score just stays at zero until you resume rescuing the explorers (whereby your score begins to increase again). Although we cannot exactly hail Jungle River Cruise as the next coming of River Raid, what was there was quite enjoyable and certainly could have been a neat showcase for the capabilities of the puffer and the 5200/8-bit computers.


    MEMOS, PICTURES, ETC.

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