Screenshots from the Atari ST version

Woah! It’s time for another Games That Time Forgot, and this time it’s a favourite from way back in my childhood. It’s dungeon crawler / top-down action platform thingy Puffy’s Saga, developed by Claude Sablatou and Butterfly software and published by none other than Ubisoft, way back in 1988.

The game’s story involves innocent bystanders Puffy and Puffyn being kidnapped, and transformed from their normal human form into shameless Pac-Man clones by an evil wizard, and then thrown into a dungeon for some unknown reason (you know what evil wizards are like). Our heroes want to escape, and to do that, they need to collect dots while fending off various monsters, working out how to get around the dungeon’s various traps, and dealing with the developers’ batshit insane ideas about level design.

Puffy’s Saga supports 1 or 2 players, each taking the role of either of the game’s characters. The levels are viewed from a top-down perspective, and are mainly 2D with some 3D-ish touches. It starts off fairly simple (the first level can be completed in around 5 seconds, the second in 10) and quickly becomes very fiendish, featuring fire pits, snakes, dragons, lightning bolts, and an ever-diminshing health bar which must be kept up by eating hunks of meat you find lying about on the ground.

Like all good fantasy wizard containing dungeon themed games, Puffy’s Saga also has collectable spells, which grant abilities like invincibility, invisibility, and extra speed. Puffy and Puffyn also have the ability to breathe fire (as seen in the screenshot above), which is nice.

The Atari and Amiga versions of the game feature sampled sound effects, including the absolutely awesome “awaawaaa” noise that some of the baddies make, and Puffyn’s girly voice randomly exclaiming “Puffy!” and “You will die!” at key moments. The controls are a simple joystick affair (using some keys on the keyboard for spells), and feel just as jerky, unresponsive, and downright frustrating as they did all those years ago.

I loved this game as a child, even though I never managed to complete it, and playing it recently has reminded of just how insane-o the whole thing is. If you like games that are frustratingly difficult, with terrible level design and mediocre graphics (even for 1988), then you’re in for a treat. Also, if you are high on drugs and enjoy sampled sound effects and firey things, this game may be for you.

Personally, I think it’s the case that actually meeting your childhood heores in later life can never be a good thing. In this case, it turns out that the game falls squarely into the “so bad it’s good” category, so we can forgive it for its sins.

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