Log Jammers Review – How Is This Imitation of Windjammers for the NES and Evercade?

If there’s anything I’ve noticed with retro-inspired titles, it’s usually obvious which game they’re taking inspiration from. In the case of Mega Cat Studios’ Log Jammers, the developers wanted to make a sports title similar to Windjammers on the NEO GEO. Yet, on much more humble hardware, that being the NES. I recently played it on the Evercade through the Mega Cat Studios Collection 1 cart. How is it?

Gameplay

After the game’s intro, one sees a few options on the title screen. These include one-player and two-player modes, and a place to admire your achievements. Starting with the single-player option, you can choose from an exhibition match or the tournament mode. In all the game modes, you pick from six different characters, three being humans and the others being monsters. These play slightly differently from each other, but not by much. A couple are a little faster, two more are slower, and the last seem to be good all-around choices.

Once you get into the game itself, you learn that it is a glorified version of PONG (Review). At least on its most basic level. Like that classic game, you seek to score points against your opponent by knocking an object past them. In this instance, it’s an axe, and if you score 12 points before your opponent does, then you win the set. Do this three times, and you advance to the next stage of the tournament.

The gameplay consists of moving your character with d-pad and pressing a button to throw the axe, presuming you have it. You can also press the other button to dash in a certain direction. While on paper this sounds useful, I found myself preferring characters that seemed faster in general. I didn’t use the dash mechanic much.

In addition to the regular moves, there’s also a special ability that each character has. There are supposedly unique to each, but they seem to be triggered by picking up a star on the playfield (I could be incorrect about the star part, though). Since that appears randomly, I didn’t use the special moves very much. More often than not, they were irritating because your character would flash and stand still before using the special axe throw. Also confusing was that these were often done in succession, with both my opponent and I trying to score points with our special moves repeatedly.

Speaking of which, each arena has three goals on both sides of the court. If the axe gets into the one in the middle, two points are scored, but the smaller corner spots net you five points for each axe that gets to them.

If you lose to your opponent, it’s Game Over. Log Jammers has no continues at all. You have to win all matches on your first try to beat the game and see the ending. After completing a stage your character does a little trash talk like what you find in a fighting game and then another screen appears indicating who’s your next opponent. The latter reminds me of another fighting game, too. The fact that this title has some design features similar to fighting games from the 1990’s is cool, but also confusing.

Why borrow those elements, but not allow for any continues? Offering at least one or two would make the game less frustrating for players.

Aggravating AI

I say that because it’s obvious that your computer-controlled opponents have an unfair advantage. I suspect that they read your inputs regularly, and will keep you from scoring points almost without fail if they want to. In fact, when the enemy is using a power up, I remember scoring a point against such an adversary only one time in my entire time with the game. When it happened, I was honestly dumbfounded, and made a mental note to mention it in my review. At least the reading of inputs isn’t completely atrocious; if you’re playing well, you can make it past the first few opponents easily.

After the halfway mark, the game usually becomes very difficult. This is especially the case if you play as Bruiser Bogardus or Mayo Monsoon. They’re among the biggest characters in the game, but also the slowest. While playing as Bruiser there was one point where I thought that it was literally impossible to score points against my opponent.

Compounding this frustration was the AI’s ability to almost always grab the powerups before me. These appear in the middle of the court and then move up or down for players to grab. Some examples include the magnet that allows you grab axes easier, or a barrel of oil that makes it so your opponent is unable to catch the axe when it’s thrown at him or her. Instead, the axe bounces off of them and comes back toward you. When the computer-controlled characters have that one, they just throw the axe at you repeatedly and then fling it to either side of the playfield to score an easy five points. I was never able to overcome a lot of the powerups when my enemy had one. Which was often, since they always knew when they would appear..

Additionally, grabbing powerups can be risky at times. While doing so, my foe would often throw the axe toward one of my goals. Usually, if I went for the powerup, it was only safe to do so if I already had the axe as well. Otherwise, my opponent would score points on an empty net as I went to get the powerup.

I found the way the AI functioned in this game to be my primary aggravation against it. Most other reviews that I’ve read or watched tend to mention something about the above in relation to the game’s difficulty.

Graphics and Sound

However, I must say that Log Jammers isn’t all bad. The various playable characters have a good degree of personality, as seen in their portraits and win quotes. Both of which are effective at conveying the vibe that the game is going for. I also liked the intro, which was kind of impressive for a Nintendo game.

Some of the stages look good, too. There’s at least eight of them, and they can be chosen from when playing the exhibition or two-player modes. The ones that have clean looking water, like where you compete at a pool or in Greece were my favorites. Their bright blue hue showed off the NES’ color palette well, and also gave the visuals a bit of depth. Unfortunately, that is not the case with all the stages. Some look downright ugly! One in particular made me feel like I was rolling over a bunch of poop because the area was almost entirely black. Maybe it was actually oil, whatever. Another place was extremely flat looking, with the water being a messy dark green. It also didn’t help that the rest of the arena was an ugly shade of purple as well. Another aspect I didn’t care for was the limited animation. This may be due to the original hardware the game was developed for, but the repetition was pretty noticeable.

As for the music, I have a soft spot for it because I liked its tone. Some of the compositions were appropriate for what I would have expected at a sporting event. Moreover, other tracks had a sense of going up against monsters. The fact that the composer meshed those concepts together was somewhat surprising to me. As such, I appreciate the music to some extent.

Less enjoyable were the sound effects, which were quite repetitive. This probably stemmed from just how much of the game is simply throwing, catching, and scoring points. Admittedly, that’s what we would expect in a sports game like this, but it is amplified due to just how fast some of the sets are finished. When the AI opponent wanted to beat me, they could score 12 points in what seemed like just a few seconds. How quickly that occurred, and that I had to start over so many times, contributed to making the repeating sound effects stand out more.

The Two Player Mode

With its various flaws in different areas, and especially its AI, I expect that Log Jammers will be too repetitive and frustrating for most players. This was a thought I had for much of my play time with the game.

As I reflected on it, I thought the only place where that perspective could be changed would be in the two-player mode. In a lot of ways, it was similar to the exhibition mode, with a single match to play, the six playable characters, and eight stages.

While my family and I played it together, we had good fun with it, but the lack of a rematch option was irritating. Thus, reminding me of the absence of a continue feature in the Tournament Mode as well. After someone won three sets, the game dumped us unceremoniously back to the title screen.

At least there were some additional options available. These included,

• The Normal game,
• A Turbo mode which is the same as Normal, but faster,
• No Items, which makes it so that there are no powerups,
• And Sudden Death.

We didn’t try the last one, but I presume that with it you win a set just by scoring a single point. The others are also self-explanatory. At least the second and third modes contributed something to the title’s gameplay to help make it more diverse.

The game was more fun in this mode than competing against the CPU, but not remarkably so.

Final Thoughts

When I first played Log Jammers, I was pretty pleased with it. I didn’t think the AI was overly difficult, the stages looked pretty good, and the personality was fun.

But then I hit the wall.

After a few matches, I’d get my butt handed to me over and over again. As this happened over the course of a few days, I could see why people didn’t like the game. Or perhaps they’d even grow to hate it due to its cheap AI.

After I hit the wall, I was prepared to give it a Negative rating.

Then I decided to try to beat the game legitimately without continuing. I wasn’t able to do that, but I came close. I got good enough to clear the game with Sparerib Boneapart while only restarting one stage through a save state. That taught me that even though the game was cheap, it could be legitimately overcome with practice.

As such, I rate the characters like this:

• Hot Foot Francis and Ollie Oilsack are presumably the fastest in the game, which makes them the easiest to win with.
• Bruiser Bogardus and Mayo Monsoon seem a bit slow, so they are like the game’s “Hard Mode.” I could never get past “The Wall” with either of these characters.
• Rad Carlton and Sparerib Boneapart seem to be mid-tier.

Through my whole experience with this game, I’ve grown to view it as just OK. Consequently, I’m giving Log Jammers a Mixed rating.

However, be aware that such a score may be too high for a lot of people. Especially if you can’t play the game in the two-player mode. In such cases, feel free to still interpret the score as Negative if you can only play by yourself and you have no desire to learn how to manipulate the AI to victory.

Title: Log Jammers (Publisher Page, with there also being a demo available)
Genre: Sports
Year Released: 2017
Developer: Mega Cat Studios (Link to website)
Available On: NES and Evercade through the Mega Cat Studios Collection 1. It’s also available on Steam in an alternate form where it is played in a horizontal fashion instead of vertically.
Price Paid: $2.52 or $25.18 for the collection on Evercade.

Remember, we can have different opinions about the games we play. If you like something more (or less) than I do, both of our perspectives are valid. Please see my Review Rating Scale to know more of how I rate games.