Originally a ten year old arcade game, Sega’s Jambo! Safari was a great concept, along the lines of fellow title Brave Firefighters - take a real life job and make a time-based action game of it. For Jambo!, you used a steering wheel and gear shift to drive around the Savannah capturing different kinds of animals in record time.
In 2009, the game gets a Nintendo Wii version, and the approach is largely the same, although now there are added open-world elements to give the game a bit more padding.
Racing around in a jeep, you are initially thrown into a hub area where you can customise your character and pimp your ride (and purchase new items with points accumulated throughout the game). From there, it’s a case of heading into the wicked wild and getting some Safari Ranger experience.
Using a Wii Remote and Nunchuk combination, you drive around with a combination of the Z-button and the analogue stick, while pointing the Remote around will help you identify animals and be more accurate in your actions.
It's a little clunky to be truly honest, and you never get the chance to jump out of the vehicle, which means you have to move this beast of a machine around all over the place and endure clipping environmental objects most of the time.
When you spot an animal you want to catch, swinging the Wii Remote around will ready your lasso, at which point the target darts off. As you give chase, motioning the Remote towards you throws the lasso onto the animal, and then once you get in close enough also throws the capture net onto it.
You then get an option to send any sick animals to the Enclosure so you can tend to it later - just one of the many missions that you can undertake whilst on the field.
These Enclosure tasks in particular are presented as very short, ten second mini-games that are rather bizarre and yet droll at the same time. Games include feeding an ostrich food from a conveyor belt and picking ticks out of a lion’s coat before brushing its teeth and patting it on its inner leg (oo-er).
You get a little reward in the form of animal information cards for catching, photographing and rescuing each species, so it provides ample opportunity for kids to learn more about the inhabitants of the Safari.
In 2009, the game gets a Nintendo Wii version, and the approach is largely the same, although now there are added open-world elements to give the game a bit more padding.
Using a Wii Remote and Nunchuk combination, you drive around with a combination of the Z-button and the analogue stick, while pointing the Remote around will help you identify animals and be more accurate in your actions.
When you spot an animal you want to catch, swinging the Wii Remote around will ready your lasso, at which point the target darts off. As you give chase, motioning the Remote towards you throws the lasso onto the animal, and then once you get in close enough also throws the capture net onto it.
You then get an option to send any sick animals to the Enclosure so you can tend to it later - just one of the many missions that you can undertake whilst on the field.
You get a little reward in the form of animal information cards for catching, photographing and rescuing each species, so it provides ample opportunity for kids to learn more about the inhabitants of the Safari.