Games of the Moment

As reccomended by myself. Stop messing around on your damn Pokémon games and play these instead. Or as well as. Doesn't apply as much if you already have played these, and since these two have been around a decade and a half you most likely have already. If you haven't, go google them.

Jill of the Jungle

Okay so that's Jill Goes Underground but it's from the same trilogy. Made back in the days when Epic Games were still "Mega", Jill of the Jungle is a VGA (although it does look as though it was originally for 16-colour users) platformer with puzzle elements. The difference between this and others? This one wins. Jill, armed with her crazy suit that manages to change colour every game, goes off somewhere and ends up saving a Prince. There's probably some big story here but I've never read it, I just go off the game titles. Jill gets random weapons floating in front of her, either the boomerang knife thing (As pictured) or a bouncing slicey thing and uses them to do battle with just about anything that moves, slugs, frogs, cute little bunnies, rocks etc. Fun.

Run it in DOSBox or VDMS or your deadly old PC with a Soundblaster sound card and you get to hear the digital music/sound effects which make this game even better. I used to play this with the PC speaker and thought it was pretty good, but the Soundblaster stuff makes it amazing, with all it's "YEAHHH"s and turntable scratching and all sorts of sounds that don't fit the game at all but are great. You also change into a bird and a fish on some levels. This is the sort of thing that needs to come back, not Unreal Tournament 23845098124 (although fish transformations would be good in that game I'm sure). Also the Jill games do something no other game does (Besides Kiloblaster although Jill does it better) - a NOISEMAKER. It's like a sound test, but every sound is assigned to a different keyboard key. Make your own "music". Brilliant.

Xargon

Xargon's very much the same game as Jill which is why I've grouped the two. Play as Malvineous as he goes and destroys Xargon or something. Same sort of thing as with Jill, jumping, climbing, attacking monsters etc. but with bigger and better sprites and a bit more difficult. Sadly there's no fish transformations, but you get a submarine at some point and you beat robots. You're also armed with the lazy man's weapon - a "bullet" that can be "fired" and controlled slightly. Sometimes you get powerups that allow you to fire more than one, and sometimes you get rocks/fireballs to throw. It lacks a noisemaker and isn't quite as good as Jill overall, but it's a little nicer on the eyes. Sound isn't as random either, although it has a shop system and has a few other little features that Jill doesn't. Overall a much more serious game but still great. By the way, ignore the "demo" in the shot above, I was lazy and just took a screenshot from the rolling demo.


Both are sadly shareware, so you can only get the first title of each legally. Nevertheless the other Jill games are easy to find (Xargon's a different story though - I've never found 2 or 3 on the net) and are worth the download. And I own them all (bar Xargon 2) on their original floppies :)