Developer: Realtime Associates Publisher: American Softworks Corporation Released 1992 Genre: Action
Sküljagger is a game that few remember but not because it is bad necessarily. The game doesn’t leave much of an impression. That shouldn’t be possible; a game about bubble gum chewing pirates fighting island natives doesn’t come along often, if at all. Yet here we are. Sküljagger: Revolt of the Westicans is perfectly adequate as a platformer and nothing more. Some games succeed so well at what they do they are neither offensive nor impressive. I can respect it but I don’t know that I would recommend either.
I will give the developers credit; they have fully fleshed out this world. The instruction manual contained a full comic book detailing the fight between Storm Jaxon and Sküljagger as he tries to free citizens of Westica from his rule. In addition to the manual the game details Storm’s progress in the war between levels. Clearly someone wanted players to care about these characters. Now if only they had paid more attention to the gameplay.
Storm is armed with Sküljagger’s sword, which, for how badly he wants it back, is really unimpressive. It has no special powers and is nothing more than a blunt object to smack enemies with. Oddly enough Sküljagger has something in common with Sonic the Hedgehog. Normally you can only take one hit before death. But so long as you hold one red or green jewel you are invincible. They don’t fly out when you are hit but they function the same as that game. Red jewels allow you to fire projectiles from your sword, with more jewels allowing more projectiles on screen. Naturally these are harder to come by. Twenty-five green jewels award an extra life as well as protection from one hit. But holding onto them long enough to collect that many is a task in itself.
Surprisingly the most interesting feature in the game is the different flavors of bubblegum. Each flavor gives different abilities, kind of like the jellybeans in A Boy & His Blob. Orange spits mini-bombs while watermelon transforms you into an invincible sphere of death. With grape bubblegum you become a bouncy ball that is both invulnerable and lets you reach higher heights. Cherry is the hardest to master. You have to manually inflate it but not too much. At the right size you can fly and with practice you can skip large chunks of a level! Bubblegum plays a large role in finding the game’s many secrets, so much so that there is a practice mode to learn the mechanics.
The levels in Sküljagger are massive and hide tons of secrets. These can range from simple hidden gems in the environment to separate secret areas. These are the best source of green gems to earn extra lives, provided you survive. There are even one or two warp zones that let you skip levels too. Sküljagger is so densely packed with secrets the manual has a special section to help you find them. It gives you a reason to search the levels rather than bee line straight to the exit. The level design isn’t exceptional in Sküljagger but it is at least interesting. The only problem is there are too many of them.
The ongoing campaign against Sküljagger is an interesting concept in itself. The problem is the game is incredibly repetitive. While the story sees you cavorting all over the island the game heavily recycles its few environments. The layouts may slightly change but you are still running through the same four or five themed environments. Between that and the limited selection of enemies it gets old fast. At seven levels with three sub-evels each the game becomes a slog. If there were a little more variety or if the game were shorter it would be more tolerable.
Considering you are invincible so long as you have one gem Sküljagger still puts up a fight. Hit detection is spotty at times leading to cheap hits. The game revels in its bad enemy placement and sudden enemies attacking from behind. I don’t mind the latter so much but the game goes overboard with it. All of these can be overcome with perseverance even though it is frustrating. What can’t are the frustrating boss battles. All are aggressive and with the small window of invincibility after each hit are tough to beat. Outside of the hellhounds and the ghost I have yet to find a consistent pattern to beating them outside of outright cheating or luck.
In Closing
Sküljagger is neither bad nor good. It simply exists. Outside of its good soundtrack I can’t see any reason to play it outside of curiosity. And if that is the case watch a youtube video.
