Producer: Konami
Retail Price: £7.95
Author: David Whitehouse, Stephen Lockley and Adrian Carless, from a Konami coin-op

Those bounders have broken into our camp and caught us with our trousers down. Not only that, but they've also nabbed quite a few of our soldiers and are now holding them Ina prisoner-of-war camp. Our boys must be rescued and Bob, Grey, Quint and Decker are just the chaps for the job.

The four set off for enemy territory in a tank. At first, they encounter only soldiers, whom they can take out with their own machine guns or by running them over. But the soldiers can shoot back too...

Soon your four good guys meet up with mightier opposition. Large gun emplacements work in unison, making it increasingly difficult to avoid fire from one gun without being hit by a second. Even this artillery can be taken out by the tank's weaponry, but only if you're prepared to take a chance - your range is limited.

On arriving at the enemy camp, the courageous quartet can blast their way through the outer gates and proceed to search for the prisoners, who are held in huts.

Other huts contain extra ammunition and weaponry, so the rescue team can build up a very vicious arsenal. But even with more and nastier weapons, it's a tough job - if you lose a life all the freed prisoners are imprisoned again.

After blasting down the walls of the prison huts and liberating the captured men, take them to helicopter pick-up points where they can escape.

And if you can manage the impossible, the fearless four can go on to attack the enemy headquarters. It's certainly a man's life in the army.

COMMENTS

Joysticks: Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: simple, bad attribute problems
Sound: annoying tune and spot effects
Options: definable keys

Every time a plan-view game appears, I live in hope. But once again it's a disappointment - the frantic jiggerings of Jackal's graphics really spoil it, the alternation of plan and side views of the tank is unrealistic, and the game itself is abysmal. The short range of your missiles means there's a very high risk of being shot in close encounters, so the game ends up brief and not very playable.
BYM [61%]

This could have been quite a smart Commando-type game, but presents no real challenge and requires no skill. It's just driving around a desert of disappointing graphics, and the only plus point is that it's fast-moving.
DAVE [59%]

What a disappointment - the scrolling is jerky, the graphics are dismal and colour clashes all the time, Now and again you get a smile from Jackal because of the ways you can die - for instance, if you run into a little stick man with your tank you blow up! But there's no playability here.
NICK [20%]

Konami
£7.95
Reviewer: Tony Worrall

Jack-Jack-Jack your body with Jack-Jack-Jackal, hot off the duplicator from the makers of the arcade original, Konami. Is Jackal a bit of a dog? After Konami's poor showing with the Speccy versions of Jailbreak and Nemesis, I was expecting something just as tacky. But no! Jackal is actually quite playable. No masterpiece to be sure, but in a funny kind of way it isn't half bad.

We're back in classic Commando land here, but in place of the lone soldier of fortune, substitute an army jeep. This vehicle is controlled by tough guys, Bob and Grey. If you play the two player option, Quint and Decker join in the fun. The idea is very simple: using the firepower of the jeep, destroy everything and everybody. You've got an endless supply of bombs so there's no need to go easy. Along the way several of your buddies have to be liberated from enemy camps, and in true Rambo fashion you have to take them to a helicopter pick-up point further along in the game. Your payment for this is the usual 'super-weapon' option, which you most certainly need in the higher levels.

Graphics are average to sloppy, with a good dose attribute clash, but they work all right. The dozy collision detector is another matter though. Animation is far from smooth and the scrolling landscape has the jitters! Jackal's certainly fast enough but at £7.95 it's overpriced. Day of the Jackal? Nearly, but not quite.

Label: Konami
Author: Cyclone
Price: £7.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Tamara Howard

'Left. Right. Left. Um. H-A-L-T!!!! Abo-o-o-ut Face!! Stand easy, no talking in the ranks, listen 'ere you 'orrible lot! You got to rescue these 'ostages! You got to blow up the gun towers! Sgt Murray was a cruel man.

So off the team wandered to play Jackal, long awaited conversion of the ever-so-popular coin-op. We set off after fighting over who was to drive our tastefully camouflaged jeep. Trying to stop Jim from murdering small furry animals with the submachine gun was no easy task.

As we hurtled through the scrolling desert night, we pondered our mission. What, we wondered, was the point?

The point hit us soon enough, when we discovered the first group of men. Marching jerkily towards us, guns at the ready, they looked brave, if small. David put a stop to their little tricks, by running them down with a quick handbrake turn and a nifty change into third.

We passed huge gun turrets with revolving cannon and dodged some pretty big really bullets. We evaded chunky tanks and blew up innocent looking huts. We rescued the odd prisoner and saw our helicopters take them safely home. We picked up bonus weaponry and crossed bridges. We got blown up quite a lot too.

And then we had a bit of a rest and a Jaffa cake. And thought, "Gosh, this is hard." (You know what wimps we are). Yes, Operation Jackal is what can only be described as "A piece of tricky programming!"

It's not a bad game. It's faithful to the coin-op, all the jeeps do the right things, blowing you up and so on, and you can even run over the little men, far more exciting than just shooting them. But it's soooo hard. The jeep you're driving nips about in a mad frenzy!

Perhaps because it's so hard, there's a real feel of, "just one moregowhathitmethattimethat'snotfairIneversawitcoming," about Jackal. If you're a die-hard player of all-action arcade games then you're going to love it. But if you're easily disheartened, inclined to wander off after only three goes because you just can't get past the third jeep, then you might leave Jackal thinking you've been swizzed.

I rather liked Jackal. It is, as I've said, good solid arcade action, and you'll need lightning reflexes to really get into it. The graphics, although perhaps a touch sketchy, are adequate, and there's a good feel of the coin op about it.

Konami koin-op konversion.

Two years too late is the initial feeling you get upon playing Konami's latest conversion; the game is basically the old Commando/Rambo idea in a jeep.

The plot is perfunctory, you land behind enemy lines in order to rescue your captured troops. You get a jeep which can fire either a machine gun or missiles. When you collect men you then go to a heli-pad so that they can be picked up by a chopper.

As you'd expect, the territory is infested with enemy troops and defences. Soldiers troll around with guns and grenades; pillboxes with rotating guns are all over the place; tanks are plentiful. It's a question of blasting all and sundry in order to survive.

Jackals playing area occupies only about half of the screen, and your jeep isn't even centred inside it, so that when you get to the edge of the area you're quite likely to get blasted by a gun-emplacement you couldn't see. Furthermore, the range of most of your weapons is such that you have to get dangerously close to things to shoot them.

As well as the unsatisfactory gameplay, Jackal also suffers from oddities in the presentation in particular, the packaging might lead you to think that there were elements of choosing characters with different capabilities or weapons; no such luck. You get what you're given - the jeep - and have to make do with it.

Reviewer: Peter Connor

RELEASE BOX
C64/128, £8.95cs, £14.95dk, Imminent
Spec, £7.95cs, Out Now
Ams, £8.95cs, £14.95dk, Out Now

Predicted Interest Curve

1 min: 60/100
1 hour: 50/100
1 day: 40/100
1 week: 35/100
1 month: 30/100
1 year: 15/100

MACHINES: Spectrum/CBM 64/Amstrad/Atari
SUPPLIER: Konami
PRICE: £7.95 (Spectrum), £8.95 (CBM and Atari cass/disk)
VERSION TESTED: Spectrum/Amstrad

Konami had a really nice arcade coin-op with Jackal. It must have seemed a great idea to convert to the home computer. A sure-fire hit. So what happened?

Okay, we know that any coin-op's graphics and sound suffer a little in the transition to the home micro, but this is ridiculous. Jackal on the Spectrum is in a sorry old state. And the Amstrad isn't much better.

It even pips that other Konami disaster, Jailbreak, in the dire game stakes.

The graphics are naff and the sound - apart from an annoying little tune which plays over the controls selection - is nonexistent.

Once again this game is about rescuing prisoners captured by the enemy. The rescue plan is codenamed Jackal and involves you rescuing the POW and dropping them off at various locations to be rescued by helicopter. You control, what is supposed to be a jeep. It looks more like a box to me. It's mounted with a machine gun which appears to fire spasmodically. Grenades, missiles - short and long range - and starburst missiles can be picked up after certain huts have been attacked and the occupant picked up.

And that's it.

I just hope the other versions turn out better than this offering. So far the only Konami game which we can give the thumbs up to is Nemesis. Of course, other software houses have converted Konami titles with much greater success.

Ironic, isn't it?