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I'm no druggie, but I've sometimes wondered what it would be like to trip out on acid, and this game is pretty dang close to my mental image of it. You play as Jack, the, uh, bat thing in a red cape, and you must float through 17 stages of mediocrity in hopes of, um, not getting your ass kicked. The title is very misleading as thier is nothing mighty about Jack whatsoever. He has no attack at all, just his extreme jumping and powers and the ability to float.
As you can imagine, the game is missing a few fundamentals. There are no bosses (though that is forgivable), there is 001 enemy throughout the entire game, and, with the exception of the cloud level, every area looks largely the same. You'll be saying to yourself "damn, haven't I been here before?" pretty often. About the 1 enemy, that is technically true, each enemy starts out as a mummy, but then changes into one of about 4 other enemies (I told you this was pretty trippy), but what gets me is that all of the alternate forms have the same attack pattern, so it doesn't even matter what the enemies transform into.
The only buttons used in the game are 'A' and 'start' (to pause, of course). You can jump VERY high, up to the top of the screen, in fact, if you get a short running start. Pressing A again in midair, you can slow down your fall for a little bit. Press 'A' repeatedly and you can float almost in straight horizontal lines. The levels are comprised of bland straight-forward challenges, and then at the end a room full of bombs as well as an endless supply of enemies. Get all of the bombs to open the door to the next level. The only way to get rid of enemies is to get a certain powerup (which looks suspiciously like a pokeball) to turn them into coins. Get 10 or more coins in a level and you access a secret "torture room" area.
The game plays pretty simple, and would be very easy, except for one thing: 1 hit kills, you have 3 lives, no continues, no 1-ups. At 17 levels that means you will have to go an average of 5.7 levels at a time without taking a hit. Also, everyone I've talked to about MBJ says the same thing, they cannot find the way out of the first room of level 17, myself included.
If you're a drug addict, I can almost guarantee you'll love this game. If you're not, I'll almost guarantee you'll find it average at best. All of that said, the game kind of grew on me after a while (a very LONG while, after hours of nausea). Try it out on an emulator before making the decision to buy or not.
Graphics 6
Cutesy
Bland, the same thing OVER and OVER
Sound 3
Innovation 8
Gameplay 7
Replay Value 6
62%
Overall Score
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