and stats such as attack power and agility differ depending on the character: Jack Frost's standard attack is throwing snowballs, Jack Lantern's is shooting fire balls, while Jack Skelton uses his knife. Their special attacks are, respectively, freezing all enemies for a few seconds; dealing a large amount of damage to all enemies; and defeating all enemies that are visible on the screen. As the player explores the floors, they need to avoid being attacked by enemies or falling into traps: each time this happens, the remaining time limit decreases by five seconds. If the timer reaches zero, the player reaches a game over state, although they are given the option to restart from the beginning of the current area. Development and release Jack Bros. was developed and published by Atlus for the Virtual Boy, and was released on September 29, 1995 in Japan, and somewhere between late October and November 1995 in North America. According to Nintendo Power, Atlus did not reveal any details about the game's development, although it is known that it initially was planned to be titled Devil Busters. It is a spin-off from Atlus' Megami Tensei series, and the first entry to be released outside Japan. Being a Virtual Boy title, it made use of the system's stereoscopic 3D to display conventional 2D graphics in monochrome red and black visuals, and a graphics technique called parallax scrolling, to create a 3D effect. Reception From contemporary reviews, Nintendo Power praised the games graphics and pacing, noting that it was "more challenging than you might expect" while critiquing in the game text as "poor". Jack Bros. was well received in retrospective reviews, with multiple critics calling it one of the best Virtual Boy games; some thought it was held back by the platform, and that it should be made available on other platforms, such as the Nintendo 3DS. In 2003, the staff at Tips & Tricks stated it to be the most uncommon North American Virtual Boy release, giving it a rarity rating of 6/10 based on a consultation with Digital Press. Brett Elston at GamesRadar thought the gameplay was "fairly basic", but still enjoyed the game, calling it unusually well made. Nintendo Life's Dave Frear enjoyed the game, but wished it had included some puzzle elements rather than focusing entirely on combat; he did however find the strategic thinking involved in going back to earlier areas