THE MAKING OF JUNGLE STRIKE: THE SEQUEL TO DESERT STRIKE

IN 1993, ELECTRONIC ARTS RELEASED A SEQUEL TO ONE OF ITS MOST ICONIC 16-BIT GAMES. THE PREMISE WAS 'BIGGER, BETTER, MORE', AND IT DELIVERED IN SPADES. RETRO GAMER DONS ITS FLIGHT SUIT AND TAKES THE COMANCHE FOR A SPIN WITH JUNGLE STRIKE DESIGNERS JOHN MANLEY AND TONY BARNES...

- GRAEME MASON

When free-roaming helicopter shooter Desert Strike became Electronic Arts' biggest non-sports hit in 1992, thoughts inevitably turned to a sequel.

The core team would remain the same: on the technical side, Mike Posehn handled programming and engine refinements with Tim Calvin once more contributing the excellent 3D models. Meanwhile, John Manley would continue to be the driving force for the budding franchise, acting as lead director and designer, encompassing mission design, storyline and the implementation of new features; assisting him again was Tony Barnes. Jungle Strike was cleared for takeoff. “Actually, even early in the development of Desert Strike, we considered that there might be a sequel,” begins John, “and when it came to designing, we wanted to take what players liked about it and give them a wider variety of locations, missions and vehicles.” Tony adds, “It was important to outdo Desert Strike, solidify the game as a franchise and not just a one-off. We also wanted to make sure that we gave the fans a worthy sequel and not just a green version of the first game.”

Despite the team’s ambitions, the basic template for Jungle Strike would remain similar. The player would pilot a Comanche helicopter with the controls again in first-person despite the third-person view, something Mike himself had originally felt was essential to the physics and ‘feel’ of the game. With the programmer busy tweaking the engine, John and Tony began to design the game's many missions and locations, as the former explains. “The way we created our levels was to print out large maps of the terrain for each one and then populate the world with individual pieces of paper that contained isometric images of buildings, roads, tanks, guard towers and so on. Then we would transcribe the X and Y coordinates for each object by hand into the level data.”