Virtual Boy Complete - Game #7

The idea of the Virtual Boy within gaming culture has always been "Wario Land good. Jack Bros. good. Everything else bad." This is not true. I really tried to get into Jack Bros, but it ultimately fell flat and came off as forgettable. It's not without merit and I can see what stuck with people from it - the problems with this game are not in its foundation, it is in the levels and bosses themselves.

Jack Bros. is a top-down game, you go through a level collecting keys, attacking enemies with a single attack, pushing blocks, and jumping off of exits - your health is also the time limit, getting hit by enemies reduces your time (within the plot, you're a fairy who has entered the human realm and has to get home by Halloween). This is a Sokoban puzzle game setup, no way about it, the combat is too rudementary to really be a top-down action game (Jack Frost has a weak rapid projectile, Jack Lantern has a slow powerful projectile, and Jack Skeleton (no relation), who I played as, only has a dinky little knife), but Jack Bros. does not really have many puzzles - it's structured like an action game where most gameplay revolves around killing and twitch-dodging enemies while the puzzles are inserted infrequently to vary the gameplay loop. This makes a game that has a well-made engine just feel slow and clunky. I will say that in the main stages you do get enough timer collectables for the time limit-health system to not feel unfair - key word: the main stages. This segways into the bosses.

The bosses are probably the worst part of this game - they're not poorly designed really, they're kinda just bog standard top-down bosses with weak points and projectiles - the problem is, like the engine, everything else around it. Timer power-ups never show up on boss fights, even though - being at the end of the stage - that is where they are by far most needed. leading to many unfair deaths. Also of note: the star system, you can collect stars that do a screen wipe - but, because this is a puzzle game where every enemy goes down in one hit, it's virtually useless until you get to the bosses, where you will have collected multiple stars (you start with 3) and can basically get it down to a quarter of it's health for no effort... and even then still get cheated by the lack of timer power-ups.

The game is at its best when it's doing puzzles. There's a fun floor with multiple exits where you have to look under the stage to figure out where to drop, and one interesting puzzle involved destroying lasers, but these puzzles are very few.

The game has a fantastic soundtrack, but it starts all over whenever you progress a stage, so you barely get to hear the smooth VB tunes. The game also suffers from having a lot of madatory tutorial text. Luckily, these don't replay when you die and restart a stage, but not so luckily, there's no way to replay them either.

Ultimately, Jack Bros. is simply "meh", only really notable for being the first localised Shin Megami Tensei game, otherwise it doesn't really have much going for it even within the Virtual Boy lineup I've played so far. If the levels and bosses were designed with puzzles in mind, I would be able to call it a stand out, but they just kinda aren't.

Behold, the first Megaten game to ever make it outside of Japan! A really cute game, it just falls into the Atlus trappings of it becoming needlessly hard at the end.

The Jack of your choice (should be Jack the Ripper/Jack Skeleton for attack power, but it's my boy Jack Frost) gets trapped in the Human World, and must fall down floors to make it back to Fairy World. Because of this, you don't really have health per se, but a timer that you lose time every time you get hit. Your timer carries between floors, but not between areas.

The first area is easy, at just 3 floors. Pixie tutorializes everything so most floors you'll be greeted by her talking about the new enemy. There's even a floor where she says she doesn't know what to say anymore.

The problem however is each area becomes longer and longer, the the point of feeling dragged out. The final area, Crystal Palace, is 19 FLOORS LONG and is followed up by a two-phase final boss with massive HP that if you fail, you have to do ALL 19 FLOORS AGAIN. These are featuring bulky enemies that can corner you easily and force you to use a special or lose time. It becomes tedious to redo all that since they play out the same each time.

It's a cute game with adorable art and good music but damn if I were in charge I'd tone down the difficulty in the second half.

You're never gonna see me play another Megami Tensei game on here so enjoy it.

The timer is the easily worst thing about this game, and that's saying something for a VIRTUAL BOY release. I thought the use of 3D was pretty cool with showing your actual progression on the floors. It's easy to see why this didn't catch on tho.

Also the pixie talks wayyy to much.

The 3/5 is only because I am reviewing the game from a modern perspective and because the game doesn't have much to it, not that it needs anything more.

It's a shockingly fun game, and it's not frustrating at all, which is surprising for how old it is. The game-play loop is good, and I really like the way the game uses time instead of a typical health bar.

I do object to ATLUS having "Jack the Ripper" as the third Jack Brother; he does not match up to Frost or Pyro's wonderful designs and characters. I think this is a fumble that will stain the franchise's past.

I picked this for my Arcade spot for my Retro Achievements spot. I ended up picking Jack Skeleton due to the friend that suggested to try it. It was a fun little game. I kinda wish I had a Virtual Boy to play this legitimately. Falling down to the next stage would of been cool to see. But the game is comprised of little levels that you need to collect keys. Either through a puzzle or by killing enemies. The bosses are a dps rush until you run out of time. And you also collect stars to bank screen clears. The final boss has two phases and the second phase is hectic. Jack Skeleton is a melee character and this made it tough. After I beat it, I tried the rest of the characters and they both have range attacks. So it seems my friend had trolled me on my character choice.
In short, its a fun little puzzle arcade game.

Kind of a lost gem from the Virtual Boy! Basically a puzzle shmup, where you're navigating different tiers of mazes, solving lock-and-key puzzles with increasingly more complex enemies the further down you go. The visual perspective makes for (what I'd imagine would be) a fun use of the Virtual Boy's 3D effect. It's bite-sized, which makes it both smartly-designed for the system and a great candidate for a mobile port. A little surprised SEGA hasn't gone for it, honestly.

Given what Shin Megami Tensei has become, it's funny to think that this was the series' introduction in the west. The western marketing makes it pretty unrecognizeable, much as I like the creepy monster designs for the three Jacks in the key art in a vacuum. But in-game, the Jacks, Pixie, and the enemies are clearly the series regular demons you know if you've played any of the SMTs/Personas (well, mostly; Jack Skelton never really caught on). Sort of funny to have this cutesy Halloweeny story end with the Jacks taking one of the SMT regular big bads. I guess it's a bit like one of the scariest dudes in all of Castlevania coming from Kid Dracula?

Tip: there's a romhack that allows you to add more time to your counter, I highly recommend it because this game is turbo bullshit

It would've been really cool if:
1 - it wasn't on the virtual boy, obviously
2 - you had a lifebar instead of a timer, don't know why they did this
3 - pixie didn't freeze your game every 2 minutes to say the most useless things ever, I swear she stopped me midway through the game to say "watch the screen to see if there's enemies". Navi never bothered me in Ocarina of Time, but the pixie here is WAY too much

Jack Bros is a unique SMT game where you play as 3 Jack demons who traverse through 7 different dungeons to return back to their homes.

The game is very simple requiring you to collect key and defeat other demons while keeping track of time. The 3d aspect comes from the top down perspective as you job is to get lower into each of the levels to get to the very bottom to face against a boss that are huge versions of iconic SMT DEMONS.

With the final boss being Beelzebub (Both his human and true form).
The gameplay differs depending on the character you choose:

1. Jack Ripper - Uses a Scythe and does the most damage out of all jacks and is the fastest however can't attack long range.
2. Pyro Jack- uses flames and is face and has long ranged/ranged attacks with his fire that does normal damage.
3. Jack Frost (SMT MASCOT)- uses snow balls to attack at a long range and quick succession however does the least amount of damage and is essentially the hard mode of the game.
4. Pixie (Cheat Code Character)- Does high damage and is fast, she is only accessible through Cheat Codes and does not have her own unique ending.

The game has unique endings for all 3 Jacks, each that are comedic, and abrupt. The game ends with a roll call of all Demons as the game ends.

The game is a very unique and enjoyable time to play through that I would highly recommend emulating via RETROARCH

Shin Megami Tensei tries out a little bit of Tower of Duraga and a little bit of Sokoban mechanics to make a game that, while perfectly fun to play, does very little to do anything new. You can play as one of the three "Jack Brothers", by which I mean you can play as two of them to have fun, and can play as Jack Frost to make yourself suffer twice as badly. Now imagine it all on a really short timer.

It's fun! It is, I promise! But it's main charm stems from fun use of the limited Virtual Boy design options, and the gameplay won't do much to make you go through another play.

Being the introduction to the megaten series to the west and what better way than to show your mascot game in Nintendo's new "innovative" console.
The game is a top down shooter puzzle game where you go through 5 stages to go back to the monster world as either of the 3 jack bros the plot of the game goes. the 3 selectable characters Frost, Lantern, and Skeleton have different abilities to could go for a different playstyle. The plot of the game is very cute and charming for SMT standards and seemed to be aimed at kids as most of the demon names were simplified for a Western audience. That being said, the game plays like an arcade title in the way that the difficulty spikes up extremely high due to the game's obstacles and the game's health system. Instead of having hit points your timer is your health so depending on what you get hit by you lose HP making the final boss extremely hard due to not the boss itself, but the spikes that are borderline hard to dodge with the bullets the boss is shooting. Was overall a nice cute game until the end level being extremely hard