I didn't see a Lion in this game. So why?
When I started playing Jungle Hunt, the catchy music and graphic style (like a children's book) instantly sent me back to 1982 when I played this in the arcade and on the Colecovision.
This is a side-scrolling adventure game (scrolls right to left btw. Interesting choice.) where you swing from vines, swim through crocodile infested waters, jump and duck past rolling boulders and jump over cannibals to rescue a girl from being boiled alive. Then you repeat the sequence with added difficulty like having to avoid monkeys on the vine swinging segment.
I found the controls responsive and accurate. The challenge seemed fair to me and so I kept playing.
Apparently this game was originally a Tarzan game but the Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan creator) estate sued. Taito changed Tarzan into a mustachioed and monocled safari adventurer and removed the Tarzan yell. Oh well, this would’ve been cooler with Tarzan, but it’s fun nonetheless.
This guy's arcade room is sick! Totally awesome!
Aside from getting a ROM for MAME on PC, this Taito Legends for PS2 and Xbox is the only place you can play the full arcade port on console. Other ports were made for consoles and computers of the early eighties, but they are much lesser experiences.
this is an interesting game. never liked it. Dodging those boulders sucks. 
They move slower than barrels in DK.
yeah but they are more unpredictable. at least, in my memory.
I hadn't played the arcade version in many years.
I think it's been a number of decades since I last played it.
Yeah Jungle Hunt was very prominent in arcades when I was a kid. At least, I noticed it was at nearly every arcade I went to back then. I didn't really like it much because I wasn't very good at it.
I think it's interesting that it originally had a Tarzan-like character and the game was called Jungle King but they had to change it, like you said.
I didn't play it much back in the arcade days either. I was more of a shmup fan then.
It reminds me of Donkey Kong which got sued for being like King Kong except that Nintendo won the case.
I had the 5200 Jungle Hunt at home, and I played the original Jungle King complete with the Tarzan scream in the arcade.
I watched the "Let's Compare" video on youtube and thought the C64 one was the best.
Love this original flyer for Jungle King.
Yowza!
Redheaded cougar lookin' woman! 
Jozanne like! Jozanne feel name too feminine. Goin' with Joe ... which sounds too much like a plumber, so goin' with Joey ... which sounds like a child who is also friends with Dennis the Menace or a baby kangaroo, so going with Joseph S. Yeah, the perfect initials. Who would ever mistrust a Joseph S.? They've all been great people, I'm sure.
Ummm ... it looks like a more fleshed-out Pitfall to me in a way, with some Donkey Kong in there as well as far as the uphill barrel dodging.
The guy in that video above mentioned it was the first game with that vine swinging but it looked like Pitfall and Jungle King came out the same year, Pitfall a few months ahead of the NA version of Jungle King. So I guess it's a tie then.
"fleshed-out" for sure. Could Tarzan have been Tarzania instead? That would've been nice. There is a Cavewoman comic, why not a game? Still, it's weird there's this loin cloth woman on the flyer when there's nothing of the sort in the game. It's just another example of meaningless sex in advertising.
Wow that's a crazy flyer!
It makes no sense either since there's no female Tarzan in the game. Just another example of advertisers sexing up a game to get people to buy it.
I don't know that I'd call it meaningless, necessarily. That arbitrary sexy photo probably served its purpose in piquing players interest. It placated the penises of the peons. It plundered the depths of the pleasant loin cloth cove in Paris. But most of all it perfectly perfected the art of presentation when it comes to purposeless sex, and in so doing gave itself a purpose all its own.
Bitch, please.
I had a feeling I was using the wrong word there. By "meaningless" I think I meant that it had no direct reference in the game since there are no woman like that in it. It's use is clear of course, to pull in the males who are the target audience. It's kind of like some comic book covers that have little or nothing to do with the contents. That kind of annoys me. It's false advertising.
No, I knew what you meant, I just saw an opportunity for an alliteration joke and went for it. Wasn't actually trying to criticize your English, although I guess irrelevant would have technically been a better word, but I'm not that picky about how blog comments are worded. lol
I agonize over words everywhere, even in comments. It's my curse.
I am forced to agonize over words when writing research papers, so I come here to relax. 
Dang I just checked my Backloggery if I had a copy of Taito Legends. No dice, but after watching the video, that vine swinging would drive me nuts. Any game that has a part where I have to jump at a rope usually ends up in a character dying and a few choice cuss words.
I think the Rom community should do a mod on this game and bring in the Tarzan yell.
Just wait 'til you have to jump to a rope with a monkey on it as well in stage two.
The ROM should be called Tarzania and have a female tarzan like on the flyer shown above. She could save some dude from cannibalism, or not and share in the delicacy, and do the tarzan yell in her own feminine voice. It's a little indie dream of mine. Sigh...
Hadn't even heard of this game before now, looks pretty fun.
It's a pretty simple game but fun. The controls are good. That's a big plus.
So it was kinda like Pitfall, but for the arcade?
Yea. I want to say one influenced the other, but they pretty much came out at the same time, within months of each other. Jungle Hunt is apparently trying to be a Tarzan game, and the earlier version, before the law suit, was a Tarzan game. Pitfall might have been thinking of Indian Jones, which came out the year before.