I loved Jackal. When we were younger, my brother and I used to play that game just to play it. We weren't trying to beat it, we were just playing it for the joy of playing it. During that time, we didn't beat it, as we weren't trying to beat it. We were just casually playing it for fun. Taking out time, and even messing around at times.
However, a few years later, and many, many other games in between, we finally went back to Jackal, and decided to put some real effort into the game. We set out to finally beat it. And, I don't know if it was because we were older, or if it's because we just played it so much, but we didn't have too, too hard of a time beating it. Now, we can beat it fairly regularly, on any given run. Still, I have fond memories of this game.
At first, we never came close to beating the game. But then, we never really tried. When we finally started putting a real effort into the game, there were certain parts that we could consistently get to, but couldn't get past that often. But, like I said, after playing it so long, and after being older and more experienced gamers, with all types of other games, we could get to the end on a more regular basis.
A lot of the game is just knowing what's coming, and how to react and/or attack certain things. At first, it can be difficult or hard. But once you play it enough, it's not as bad as you once thought. My brother and I had a tendency to want to kill everything on the screen, and rescue all of the POWs. So, that made it more challenging, as it took longer, and gave more of a risk of "accidentally" getting shot yourself. Especially in 2 players, when one person is trying to go one way, while the other person wants to go the other way. That has screwed us up on more than one occasion, that's for sure.
But even just messing around, before we started taking the game seriously, we could get up to, and usually, pass level 3 fairly easily. I think it was level 3. The one in the swamp with the helicopter boss. We could consistently get up to, and usually beat, that level without even trying. The next level was pretty easy too, I believe. I don't think it had a boss. At least, I can't remember off hand what it was. I remember the first level, the ancient ruins level, the swamp level, and then, hmm.. don't remember exactly what came after that. Howver, it was when we started to get to the milatary base that we started to become proud of ourselves. That was the first really difficult level for us. Some of the other levels gave us some problems here or there. But it was mostly because we were messing around too much. Focused too much on killing anything and everything. Or trying to save 100% everybody. Or, one going at a faster pace than the other, or going in different directions. So the difficulty in that game was caused more by our doing, and not the game itself. As for that last level, the military base level, man, so many enemies and bullets flying everywhere. And when you have 2 players, with one going fast and the other trying to kill everything, taking his time.. or, again, one wanting to go one way, while the other person wants to go the other way. Yeah, that was difficult.
But again, after playing the game so much, the difficulty seemed to come more from human error than it did from the game itself. We found that we had an easier time beating the game in single player mode than we did in two player mode. Mostly because, at times, we worked better alone in that game, than together. Although, to be fair, there were times when having 2 players helped out a lot. We knew when and where the enemies were coming, and we could over both sides of the screen better. Even use one player to flank the enemy, and get around it. So playing 2 players had it's advantages too. Especially on the boss fights, as it made taking them down a bit easier, and quicker.
But yeah, overall, the difficulty wasn't too, too hard. Well, not if you played it as often as we did. I think our advantage came from not taking the game seriously at first, and mostly just messing around with it for a long time. When we finally started to take the game seriously, and wanting to beat it, we pretty much already knew the in's and out's of the game. What to expect, and from where. Stuff like that. So that helped us out. I think that if he had just dived into the game, head first, we would of had a more difficult time with it. But, the way that we did it, it didn't seem too, too bad, difficulty wise. Still, fun game none-the-less. One of my overall favorite NES titles, still.
