We just plugged the cartridge into the SNES and that opening briefing music hits. I forgot how tightly composed these early-’90s soundtracks are. Fun fact before we fire up the Comanche: Jungle Strike is part of Electronic Arts’ Strike series, which began with Desert Strike. EA was already flexing its clout in the console market. They took that helicopter-action formula and fleshed it out into increasingly elaborate missions. The team clearly wanted a cinematic, arcade-friendly take on tactical air strikes.
Listeners in 1993 would have recognized the DNA immediately. The same angled overhead view, the fuel-and-armor resource management, and missions that mix air attacks with short ground-forays. We should say up front: our verdict is a B. It earns that by being ambitious, fun, and often frustrating in equal measure.
Gameplay Highlights
The controls are responsive in the Comanche. Helicopter handling feels immediate — you can hover to line up a Hellfire missile or strafe with the chain gun. The isometric-ish diagonal-down perspective makes aiming and depth perception awkward at times. Still, that visual style gives the jungle and river channels a very distinct look. The variety of vehicles — Comanche, hovercraft, speedboat, motorcycle — keeps the missions feeling fresh.
Mission design is the real strength. One moment you are sniping anti-air emplacements from the air. The next you’re swapping to a boat and laying mines on a shipping lane. Objectives make you prioritize: rescue prisoners, defuse explosives, take out radar towers, and eliminate Carlos Ortega and Ibn Kilbaba’s assets. That mix of roles makes the hour-to-hour play engaging.
Enemy placement and escalation are smart. Early missions teach you to conserve fuel and ammo. Later, every run becomes a puzzle: what to destroy first so you can return to base without running dry or getting picked apart by SAM sites.
Hot Tips
- Manage resources: Keep an eye on your fuel gauge. Don’t be proud — come down to refuel when you can; running to empty in enemy airspace is never heroic.
- Weapon choice: Hellfires are for tanks and hardened targets; Hydras are useful against soft targets and clustered enemies; the chain gun is your friend for light skirmishes and to pick off helicopters before they get too close.
- Use vehicles smartly: If a mission hands you a hovercraft or speedboat, use mines against convoys and ships. Motorcycles let you clear out checkpoints quickly if you’re going for timed objectives.
- Terrain matters: Jungle cover can hide anti-air, and the isometric angle can mask SAM emplacements. Scout carefully before committing.
- Save your best runs: The game can be punishing on later missions; when you find a safe pattern to tackle objectives, repeat it rather than improvising every time.
One of our practical dilemmas right now: do we go after the river convoy first or neutralize the radar? The game rewards careful sequencing. We went after the radar this run and that opened up a clean flight path to the communications tower — saved us a handful of repair trips.
Memorable Moments & Anecdotes
We still laugh about that time I tried a drive-by from a jeep on the roadside — in theory the side guns are brilliant for soft targets, but the camera angle turned the whole scene into a frantic ballet of missed shots and a very angry tank. The soundtrack during the river chase is very ‘big action’ — giant drums and synth stabs that make you imagine you’re in an action movie. It is very satisfying when a well-placed mine takes out a patrol ship and the little explosion sprite pans across the screen.
Then there are the small touches that sell the world: the way buildings collapse into rubble when you level them, the enemy choppers that flare up at the last second, and the occasional mission where you have to jump into a ground vehicle and do a short stunt run. It feels like a toybox of weapons and vehicles, which is 1993-perfect: a movie in a cartridge.
The difficulty curve can spike without warning. A later mission we attempted tosses you directly into an island fortress crawling with AA emplacements and gunboats. You spend the first several tries learning the spawn patterns. The lack of modern checkpoints means those learning runs cost you time and patience.
Speaking of the final boss: confronting Ibn Kilbaba and Carlos Ortega’s compound is an exercise in careful attrition. The final sequence forces a careful neutralization of SAMs, a timed run to disable a launch sequence, and a frantic chase as the nuclear device begins to go critical. It is cinematic by design — tense, a little unforgiving, and satisfying when you finally dismantle their convoy and take down the command bunker. The final explosion scene is loud and pixelated in a wonderful era-appropriate way.
Final Thoughts
Our major gripes? Repetition sets in over long play sessions, and the diagonal viewpoint occasionally makes precise aiming feel fiddly. Also, if you burn through your lives or mismanage resources, the reset is punitive: you feel the cost of mistakes sharply.
To summarize: Jungle Strike is a thoughtful action title with great mission variety and excellent moment-to-moment tension. It earns its B by balancing ambition and polish—sometimes nailing the cinematic air-combat fantasy, sometimes tripping over a punishing difficulty curve and awkward perspective. For anyone with a few nights and a stack of EGM issues on the coffee table, this is well worth the time.
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