The Comic Book Influence of Jack Hammer
NetEnt have a well-deserved reputation for making slots with really high production values, and their comic book-inspired offering, “Jack Hammer”, is among their best. Everyone and their mother was trying to make some kind of comic book-themed slot a few years back (hell, some never stopped – looking straight at you, PlayTech), and meanwhile NetEnt straight up said “You know what, screw it, rather than begging Disney or Warner Bros for the rights to DC and Marvel superheroes, we’ll just make our own!” And make one they did! Enter Jack Hammer, a private detective/gangster hunter set in a highly stylized version of the 1930s. He wears fancy colors, saves damsels in distress, and fights bad guys with ridiculous features, like lobster claws. Wait a second… That sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Indeed, “Jack Hammer” is an homage to Dick Tracy, an extremely popular comic strip from the 1930s about a yellow-clad detective solving crimes in a colorful, funky version of the 1930s and inevitably mowing down the bad guys after deducing that they’re responsible for some sort of crime. Created in 1931 by Chester Gould and still continuing to this day, Dick Tracy is a phenomenon that several generations of American kids grew up with. Its flashy colors, over the top villains and procedural stories are instantly recognizable, spawning a slew of imitators and even a full motion picture in 1990. Dick Tracy-style detective comics, for a while in the 30s and 40s, became a genre of their own, heavily influencing the noir fiction of the time and solidifying themselves forever in pop culture. To put it in a way that you youngsters can understand, Dick Tracy-style crime strips in the 30s were the superhero comics of the 90s – literally everywhere, and enjoyed by everyone. Hell, there are rumors that when Dick Tracy’s archnemesis died, people were publicly mourning him!
Jack Hammer, naturally, takes many cues from Dick Tracy and the other various comic books of its ilk. The influence is the character designs are obvious – very angular features, sharp, bold colors, ridiculous exaggerations… But it doesn’t just stop there. Look at the design of the Dick Tracy strips:
Numerous panels organized in boxes and separated by a white border. Look familiar? If not, just scroll to the top of the page, to the screenshot from Jack Hammer. Yeah, the folks over at NetEnt managed to recreate Dick Tracy’s iconic comic book style through the use of their slot symbols, which, to me, is absolutely brilliant and speaks of a profound love and understanding for the source material. The fact that a video slot managed to put so much work into not only resembling its inspiration, but recreating it down to the smallest detail while still being fully and completely original, is utterly mindblowing. I can only hope that we see more slots with such strong inspirations popping up – and when they do, I’ll be sure to talk about them!
That’s an indisputable fact. I’m sorry, but not even the most hardcore slot fan, someone with a decade of experience playing hundreds of slots, can convince me that the overwhelming majority of slots aren’t trash with very little in the way of artistic vision. I should know because I’m that superfan, having played my very first slot in the year Obama was elected president for the first time. Since then I literally lost count of just how many slots I’ve played, and I can tell you for a fact that most of them aren’t good. Of course, I don’t mean that as a blight on the industry as a whole – there’s thousands upon thousands of online slots, so even if just 10% of those are worth your time, then that’s still more slots than anyone can seriously play in a lifetime. A lot of these slots have fantastic bonus games. Others offer jackpots that will make you rich. But those aren’t the ones I care about.