J.J. & Jeff is one of the most unusual games released for the Turbografx-16. It’s a localized version of another title called Kato and Ken that had no business being released outside of Japan in the first place. Kato and Ken is a television show that ran in the early 90s over there and it was quite popular. I’ve never seen it, but from what I hear it’s based entirely on juvenile humor. This is the game based upon it. Or, it was, but because no one in the English speaking world is familiar with the material it transformed into JJ and Jeff while crossing the ocean. Today I’m taking a look at this off-key Turbografx game. The result isn’t pretty.
JJ & Jeff stars the the titular characters who just happen to be detectives. The story begins as they take on a new case involving a kidnapping of a millionaire. Unlike most games of the time there’s a fair bit of text in this adventure, but it’s mostly just there to convey JJ and Jeff’s off-beat humor. Like most licensed games from this time period JJ and Jeff is a side scrolling action platformer game. You guide one of the two characters (you can choose but they’re functionally identical). You hop and bop your way through a series of different levels, and have a limited number of other abilities at your disposal.
Your primary means of attack is a kick. Unfortunately the range on this is pathetic. You have to get right into an enemy’s face in order to hit them. I found the old fashioned well placed jump on the enemy’s head to be far more effective in most situations. You can also shoot a projectile attack by spraying an aerosol can when you duck. The range on this is better, but the trajectory weaves up and down making it frequently ineffective. As far as attacks go that’s pretty much it. There aren’t really any power-ups (you can get temporary invincibility, but that just seems to be at random when you’re revived). Unfortunately JJ and Jeff doesn’t have much else to offer.
It really doesn’t help that the levels are so simple. You’ll encounter only a handful of different types of enemies, and their patterns never offer any real variety. Some items, power-ups, or even weapons would have gone a long ways to making this one more interesting. Usually I’m against underwater levels, but JJ and Jeff could have used them. Something. Anything. The game is very basic and feels like one of those shareware platformers you’d find in the mid 90s. At first I was mildly entertained with the basic gameplay but as soon as I discovered that this was all there was I was over it. JJ and Jeff feels like it was developed by a development studio that had zero passion behind it.
I enjoy a good secret here and there, but JJ & Jeff goes overboard. Instead of being intelligently hidden you instead uncover most of the hidden items and doors by kicking. You never want to stop kicking, and jumping too. Sometimes it’ll be coins (which can be used in a slot-machine mini-game for little bonuses) and other times it’s food that restores your vitality. Every once in a while you’ll find an invisible switch that reveals a platform, and this is frequently necessary to progress. When you reach these sections it can feel like a road block because you’re stuck jumping and kicking until you find it. Usually this is near a bottomless pit and one misstep will cost you a life.
This leads me to the controls. Both JJ & Jeff maneuver like they’re running on ice. Everything is far too slippery, and when you’re not sliding around it feels like you’re trudging through glue. The characters have a weight about them that just doesn’t seem right. JJ and Jeff requires too much precision for the aforementioned discrepancies. The biggest problem I had is the fact that your regular jump is pretty short. To go higher you actually have to hold up on the control pad. Features like this are typically the kiss of death in platformer games for me, but it’s not quite on that level here. It’s still annoying however, and it doesn’t help that the rest of the game is awful.
JJ & Jeff is also a pretty ugly game. The characters are designed to look goofy with exaggerated features and never-ending smiles. They’re bad looking, and contrast oddly with the semi-realistic enemies. Bugs and birds have no place here. The fact that the birds attack by dropping their feces is pretty entertaining, and probably the only element of humor that made me laugh. The backgrounds are also very plain, and the game has only a few different ones. The boss characters are incredibly generic and I really wasn’t a fan. JJ & Jeff features some very lame music. It has that typical Turbografx audio chip jank, and it’s very repetitive. Certainly this soundtrack isn’t going to win any awards, and you’re best left muting it.
I find it weird how often this game has been re-released or referenced by classic collectors. It seems like it would be much more important than it actually is. JJ & Jeff represents a good portion of what went wrong with the Turbografx. Most of the jokes fall flat, the graphics are bad, level designs remind me of something you’d find on the Amiga, and there’s just nothing compelling to find here. JJ & Jeff can be found for cheap, but I really don’t recommend adding this HuCard to your collection. Maybe the Japanese counterpart is better, but given the basic gameplay issues this title suffers from I highly doubt it.
