Pirate Pete

Pirate Pete was an old arcade game released by Taito way back in 1982.

Pirate Pete is a reworked version of Jungle Hunt, which was itself a reworked version of Jungle King. Taito figured that they might as well try and rework a successful title for a third time, so they did. Graphically this is the most attractive game in the series, but the gameplay is identical right down to the patterns of each enemy. Taito actually attempted to sell this same game a fourth time under the name "Jungle Boy", but they had a hard time convincing anyone to buy it.

This title has not been ported to any other systems that I am aware of..

In Pirate Pete you play a red haired pirate, with an interesting purple outfit (real pirates never wore purple)..

Pirate Pete has four levels, each of which could be considered a separate game in their own right. So I will discuss them separately. It is notable that this game scrolls right to left, while the vast majority of scrollers go from left to right, although most people probably wouldn't even notice that.

The first level may have been the best level in the game. You use your jump button to move from right to left across a series of swinging ropes, This level is easy to master, but you do have time time your jumps to make it to the next vine. Many years later Nintendo would borrow heavily from this sequence for their hit game Donkey Kong Country. This sequence puts the ropes on the deck of a ship, as opposed to the way they hung from trees in the other games in this series (a green pirate ship at that).

The second level is an swimming sequence. You move your pirate around in the shark infested water. You have a breath meter here that you must watch to avoid drowning (simply swim up to the surface to get more air). You can stab the crocodiles with your knife, but only when their mouths are not all the way open (I choose to dodge them myself). This sequence changes up the enemies from the other games in the series, and adds some very nice images of an underwater area filled with gold and sunken ships.

The third level is a rock jumping sequence. Simply use your joystick and jump button to leap over rolling boulders as you climb a hill on the way to your eventual goal (this sequence has also been "borrowed" from heavily in dozens of later games). This particular level is almost graphically identical to the same level in Jungle Hunt.

The fourth and final level has you guiding your pirate through a pirate cove. You have to jump the other pirates while their cutlasses are down, and eventually make your way towards the un-named girl who is being lowered into a pot to be boiled for supper (since when are pirates supposed to be cannibals?).

You then get to view a short "I Love You" ending, and then the game begins again with increased difficulty.

Pirate Pete used the familiar "Taito Classic" cabinet that was used for a variety of early 1980's games. This was a rather short cabinet, and had a monitor that was laid back at more than a 45 degree angle. Most of these cabinets featured the same painted sideart which consisted of an ornate border and a "Taito" logo. Many other early Taito games will plug right into your Pirate Pete machine without modification (although the boardsets for these early games tend to be expensive).

The marquee to this title showed a "Pirate Pete" logo, surrounded by images of treasure and pirate ships..

This title used six (count em, six), processors. It used a pair of Z80s to run the main program data (one at 4 Mhz and one at 3Mhz). While it used four AY-8910 processors to do audio chores (all of them running at 1.5 Mhz). The program code was stored on 21 EPROM chips, each having 4K of storage.

You can convert this title to Jungle King, Jungle Hunt, or Jungle Boy simply by replacing the EPROMs on the games PCB. There are several people online who can do this rather cheaply (I recommend Bob Roberts at www.therealbobroberts.com as he is friendly, and is one of the most knowledgeable arcade techs alive today).

This title is not officially supported by any emulators, but it can be hacked into MAME fairly easily (although it is supposed to be in one of the next few releases anyway, so you might as well wait).

Pirate Pete is now officially supported by MAME, as of version .60 (so now you actually have a chance of playing this game).

Although fun, I can't really recommend this one for adding to your arcade game collection. The gameplay quickly becomes repetitive, and you would probably find that your spanking new Pirate Pete machine would rarely if ever get played. Of course you should always buy any game if the price is right and you have room (I buy anything that is $100 or less, assuming I have both the space and the money at the time). This is the rarest of all the widely released "Jungle" games from Taito, so it may go for a premium price.