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   Company Hudson Soft ESRB Rating E for Everyone Release Date US - May 28, 2007 Controllers Wii Remote Classic Controller Gamecube Controller Wii Points 600  Review by: Corbie Dillard ©2008 Virtual-Turbo |
JJ
& Jeff was originally released as an early PC Engine title in Japan
and became well known for it's unique blend of slapstick and off-color
humor. Not many games over the years have featured two bumbling
detectives who spend most of their time urinating in public parks and
passing gas at their enemies. The game was sort of like the Three
Stooges minus one. It was this quirky humor that allowed the game to
become fairly popular despite it's limited and somewhat mediocre game
play. Here's where the problem lies. When Hudson brought the game over
to the US as JJ & Jeff, they removed most of this controversial
humor and toned down the game to the point that it just lost what
little charm it had to begin with. Now all gamers in the US were left
with was a silly game that now had to rely on its limited game play to
keep the player's attention. The game has quite a loyal following
around the gaming community even all these years later, but most fans
of the game prefer the more entertaining Japanese version of the game
over this stripped down US release. Unfortunately, Hudson has decided
to release this censored version onto the Wii Virtual Console instead
of finally giving US gamers a chance to experience the crude humor of
the Japanese original.
JJ & Jeff is a very standard platformer that closely resembles another Hudson release, New Adventure Island, when it comes to the way the game plays. You basically run through each level, avoiding the many enemies and obstacles that you come across. You have several attacks at your disposal including a kick, a stomp, and a spray. For those wondering why developers would include a spray as an attack, keep in mind that this attack was originally the characters passing gas before it was deemed inappropriate for US gamers. Some enemies can be defeated with any of these attacks but every once in awhile you'll come across an enemy that requires one specific attack and is immune to the other attacks. There are also items in each area that can be kicked and broken to reveal special surprises or power ups. The game features 6 areas, each made up of 4 levels per area. You'll have to locate a hidden key in one of these levels that you'll need in order to reach the boss at the end of the fourth level in each area. The key is never too hard to find but if you miss it, you'll have to go back and find it before you can fight the boss and move on to the next area. The play control is really good at times and really loose at others. The hit detection can make it difficult to consistently make contact with enemies, and your character will tend to take a step or two even after you stop pressing the direction on the control pad. This can make some of the pinpoint platforming portions of the game very difficult to manipulate. The boss fights themselves are nothing too technical and generally require you to just walk up to the boss and kick him before he kicks you. Don't expect any fancy movements or attack patterns as there are none. The Japanese version of the game had the humor aspect to help mask this limited play control, but unfortunately the US version doesn't have the same luxury. The entire feel of the play control just mainly takes some getting used to, if anyone can find the game appealing long enough to accomplish it. Since this was one of the earlier TurboGrafx-16 titles, don't expect too much in the way of visuals. Every once in awhile you'll come across a particular area that really looks nice, but for the most part, the backgrounds don't feature much in the way of detail and there's not much variety in the color usage in each area. The two detectives are really the best part of the game, visually, with their overly large heads and pint-sized bodies. JJ & Jeff looks more like an older NES title than a TurboGrafx-16 release. The music in the game is about like everything else. It just doesn't stand out much. The tunes are nice enough, but there's really not much in the way of sound effects to add anything to the musical effort so the entire package just comes off sounding very ordinary and bland. It's not so bad that you'll want to turn down the volume, but you certainly won't catch yourself humming these tunes either. Once again you have to remember that this was originally released in 1987 a full two years before the TurboGrafx-16 system was even launched in the US, so it doesn't make very good use of the system's sound or graphics capabilities the way more recent titles do. The crude humor was really the biggest selling point of this game and once it was taken away during the trip to the US, there just wasn't a lot left. Sure it's a decent enough platformer and it does have its moments, they're just few and far between and there's not enough in between them to keep most gamers coming back to this one. If you want to see what this game was originally like, track down the PC Engine version of Kato & Ken. At least then you can see what the fuss was about. If you're just a diehard platformer fan, you might want to check this one out, but even though it shares some similarities with New Adventure Island, it's not even remotely as much fun. |
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