I'm not much of an Atlus person. I respect them, there's a lot I like about SMT and Persona from a distance, but the complex mechanics and infamously high difficulty just don't do it for me. I don't like RPGs that much. That being said, there is one SMT game I love and it's probably not the one you'd expect: Jack Bros for the freaking Virtual Boy.
As a fan of underdog consoles, I've always had a bit of a soft-spot for the Virtual Boy. I can imagine it'd be absolute hell to actually use, but it's got some positives. Through some pretty impressive cheating, it managed to pull off 32-bit widescreen on a handheld five years before the GBA. It's got a great soundchip that sounds like that of no other console. And it's got a unique library full of weird experimental one-offs that try to make the most of what they're given. Games like Teleroboxer, Mario Clash, Space Squash, Insmouse No Yakata, and of course, Virtual Boy Wario Land, which really use the stereoscopic 3D to good use. But Jack Bros is special because it isn't just a great Virtual Boy game, it's just a damn good game that I absolutely love coming back to. It's a fast-paced and fluid dungeon crawler with thoughtful level design, a perfect difficulty curve, lots of replayability, banger music and tons of charm, while also using the stereoscopic 3D in some neat ways of its own. But that's getting ahead of myself, let's delve a bit deeper into why I love this game so much.
Jack Bros is a hybrid between a twin-stick shooter and a dungeon crawler, where you play as the iconic SMT enemies, the titular Jack Brothers, and blast your way through six meticulously designed dungeons before a timer runs out. The timer is the fundamental sense of tension here, because it's the only determinent of whether you win or lose. There are no lives or health systems here, getting hit only takes time away from the clock, though you can also find clocks to give you more time by fighting enemies and exploring the dungeons. While having to deal with a timer may sound annoying, I think this is overall an incredibly well thought-out system that gives the game a fun frantic pace, aided by the super tight, responsive, and intuitive twin-d-pad controls. There's a nice risk and reward element with taking the time to look around and engage with enemies at the cost of wasting time, and because all of the dungeons are hand-crafted rather than randomly-generated, you won't be starting from square one each time you fail a stage.
It also helps that the dungeon design itself is top-notch, probably the best thing about this game. Each dungeon brings a bunch of new gimmicks and ideas to the table that the game slowly doles out at a consistent rate, while also getting increasingly larger. There's spiked floors, blocks to push, warp pads, flamethrowers, locks and keys, lasers, ceilings that block you from seeing Jack, and my personal favorite, areas that will force you to hop back and forth between floors to solve a maze. Even the tutorials are used in giving Jack Bros a really tight difficulty curve. In the early stages, a Pixie will stop you to give you tips on pretty much every floor. But by the final dungeon, Pixie will pretty much dip out and force you to tackle everything you've learned throughout the game all on your own. And then there's the enemies, and man, what a lineup. Even as someone who isn't a huge SMT fan, it's hard not to recognize how much of a love letter this game is to that series' gallery of enemies. The sheer amount of new enemy types this game keeps throwing in is incredibly impressive, from archers, to centipedes, to ghosts that run away from you, to shielded knights, to cyclops that freeze you in place, to so many others. The game even gives a charming cast roll of all the enemies once you beat the game, it really does feel like their time to shine.
Jack Bros isn't all that long of a game, only really clocking in at around an hour, but it makes up for that with just how replayable it is. Befitting the name, there are three Jack Brothers to play as, each with entirely different weapons and movesets. I usually play as the balanced Jack Frost, but there's also the slower and more powerful Jack Lantern, and the knife-wielding Jack Skellton if you want a more melee-centric playthrough. But even on top of that, there's also a Hard Mode you can access via password, and by beating that, you'll get another password that lets you play as the tutorial character, Pixie. This is an insanely cool bonus and Pixie is a super powerful character, blisteringly fast and boasting some serious firepower. And on top of all that, you skip all the tutorial messages because you're playing as the tutorial character. Just brilliant.
Visually, Jack Bros looks really nice too. It doesn't push the console like something like Galactic Pinball or Red Alarm, but the spritework is super detailed and well-done. The visual highlight of Jack Bros is the fact that you can always see the successive floor in the background, and instead of finding a staircase that just warps you to the next floor, you have to find a ledge and literally jump down to the next floor. It's such a cool effect and a great usage of the Virtual Boy's stereoscopic 3D, and the game even utilizes it in some sections where you get multiple ledges and have to figure out which one to use. I also need to give props to Jack Bros's absolutely phenomenal soundtrack. Yes, even Atlus's spinoff has godly music, and Jack Bros in particular has hands down the best music on the Virtual Boy. I already praised its soundchip, but Hiroyuki Yanada displays a mastery over the chip unlike anyone else, he really makes it sing. There's a nice variety of music too, from jazzy tunes to more atmopsheric tracks, and they're all great, particularly the main dungeon themes. The Forest Of Fairies, Temple Of Nightmare, Dragon's Belly, and especially Mecha Fortress all being particularly noteworthy. But the highlight of the whole soundtrack for me is the Stage 2 theme, Grim Reaper's Cavern, which is a banger so massive that hearing it for the first time was the point when I realized Jack Bros truly was something special.
Like with Sin & Punishment, Jack Bros is a game that I have returned to time and time again for replays and it just simply never gets old. The fluid and addictive twin-stick gameplay, the immaculately-designed dungeons, the tight pacing and difficulty curve, the endless amounts of replayability, the clean visuals that play to the Virtual Boy's strengths, the awe-inducingly good soundtrack, and the super charming roster of enemies make for a condensed masterclass in dungeon crawler design.
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