Looking Back Ufouria: The Saga
When we talk about games on Gamer.no and elsewhere, it's primarily about the newest, the prettiest and the best. But the game popular tests, as most people, really incurable nostalgikere. It's about recreating the first golden moments that have left us, but put an indelible impression. Moments that made it tingle in my stomach to ice down his back.
For me it is just natural to talk about the first game as the first love, and here are caresses a question about the level design, movement patterns, shapes.Then and there it was, however, not so. I played because it was fun because it was new and because it was exciting. Only after one begins to understand what you actually experienced. Of childhood games may have also selected that you can not forget? For me there were two such games: Castlevania 3 and Ufouria.
On the trail of the lost game
But where the former was the third game in a series that is still alive and well and has gone into all spillkritikeres vocabulary as we talk about Metroidvania genre, Ufouria exists only as a forgotten shadow of our latitudes. This is largely because the game was not released in the U.S. until it recently appeared on the Wii Virtual Console, and therefore not part of the America-centric gaming industry's public awareness.
I never owned any of these games on tape, so I played with a buddy. The only console to be released within the four walls before a decade later bought an Xbox was a Game & Watch. My parents' critical attitude to the game caused it to go away to play had an element of the forbidden about it, that it felt as if I committed an offense against the family institution. For me it was my first encounter with the game far more exciting than my first encounter with porn.
The funny thing is that Ufouria explored just Metroidvania model, a coherent world that explored gradually; where one oriented to the right and left, up and down, to find monsters to fight gives you access to the tools you need to get a little further .
Four brothers who are not brothers
Ufouria is the name of the alien world of the game takes place in. The title should be regarded as one of the game industry's smartest play on words as it plays on the word euphoria (a high happiness), and the narrative four playable characters. Our first protagonist, the blekhudede and hat Bop-Louie, start the game Mutters alone on the bottom of a crater. His three friends, dinosaur FreeOnes-Leeon, ghost Shades and Gil frog has disappeared, and it is your task to find them again so you can get together and escape from adventure crater.
Ufouria may be structured as Metroid, but it plays more like Super Mario Bros.. You move Bop-Louie with the Board the cross, while the two buttons take care of jumps and special attacks. Enemies defeated in that you jump on them while holding down the control cross, and defeated the enemies give up either beads that give you life or blocks that you can cast in combat.
Control is very responsive, but forkludres from time to time by an uneven picture update. Ufouria pushing namely Nintendo about as far as it can be pushed. The detailed and expressive graphics fit the game's expression perfectly. Each animation is a love child who awakens laughter and joy.As you find your friends discover that they suffer from amnesia and that the only way to get them to remember you is to challenge them to a duel in brick throwing. Defeat does not result in something worse than that you get a chance. When you succeed the figures available from the game menu that is available via the Start button.
Each character has their own skills, special attacks, you must take to get you further, often with a humorous twist. FreeOnes dinosaur-Leeon can swim and walk on ice, while the frog Gil can appear under the water and spit bombs. On your journey through the diverse and often directly psychedelic world you will meet a number of challenges. Light switches must be turned on. Steiner must be moved. Water taps to be activated. Eggs should be returned. The wild mix of papers makes no sense other than that they are absurd in the game's context. But that does not mean they are not easy to understand.
Each character has their own skills, special attacks, you must take to get you further, often with a humorous twist. FreeOnes dinosaur-Leeon can swim and walk on ice, while the frog Gil can appear under the water and spit bombs. On your journey through the diverse and often directly psychedelic world you will meet a number of challenges. Light switches must be turned on. Steiner must flyttes.Fauna from hell, audio player from the sky
Ufouria is a beautiful game because it's strange, but just beautiful. It rests a subtle logic of the action that lies at the intersection of gaming paradigm and the real world. Mice in a cheerleading uniform, giant tyggegumier, lips going forward with the tongue, as the miners drilling away over ... and this is only Ufourias common enemies. Game hirdforere goes from a basic half-formless fight, who smiles when you stomp on him in a femtalls iterations of a series of note whimsical cats. But if the enemies are recycled, they still vary enough in features, form and color that it feels like that motives are developed, not that SunSoft ran out of ideas way. Water taps to be activated. Eggs should be returned. The wild mix of papers makes no sense other than that they are absurd in the game's context. But that does not mean they are not easy to understand.
The funniest yet most tragic of Ufourias wild life is the cat who greets you with armor. As armor disappears is the cat crying back, while you have no choice but to skip it to death. This is a brilliant commentary on the game violence and the limited opportunities for interaction medium is still struggling with.SunSoft, Ufourias authors have made a number of classics in which the best known is perhaps Batman game for the NES. Common to them all is that they have some of the best music available from 8-bit era, and Ufouria is no exception. From the agitated au chief enemy of the music of it is simply unmoved carillon that meets you when you complete the game and the credits roll SunSoft shows that they know the value of a good composition.
Ufouria in Japan known as Hebereke. The game had some success there and got several cuttings in no way lives up to the original. Parts of the design in the eastern edition differs from what we know from the west. Bop-Louie is the penguin and Hebereke FreeOnes-Leeon is a girl dressed in Dinosaur Costume, while the bird enemies no longer drop weights in the head at you, but rather let the birds usually do not. The western version overcomes quality on which all of these changes are positive, so please do not be afraid that you miss something.
Mix
With livcontainere, healing drinks, map and compass, it is natural to describe Ufouria as a hybrid of action game and RPG in the same class as The Legend of Zelda. But with its perpendicular 2D approach and precise control is playing it as a platform by Mario School. The strange thing is that it completely lacks the challenge Mario and Luigi has taught us to love, how clever design ideas exist only for its own sake and not for the player to develop skills.
As I see the game today, it feels just like a child play. But just like in the film adaptation as well as original material for modern kids classics like Coraline, and Where the Wild Things Are makes this nothing. Ufouria has elements about it that makes it easy to understand history, the relatively short length (you can play through the game on a couple of hours) and the almost simple interactivity immaterial to the overall experience. You feel that you are drawn into a universe that is not only illogical, but childishly illogical. The mixture of almost random elements reminiscent most of all about how children organize the stories and the universe, how they take almost anything and rotate it together in a way that has no other logic than the childish whims and fancies.
More problematic is how the story in Ufouria seems like a boundless apologia for colonialism. The four friends find themselves in a strange world that have made them something and end up killing its feet in an attempt to find the way home. To reveal how it all ends is perhaps unnecessary, and therefore I omit it, but that there is no real motivation for the actions of the four friends are mildly curious. They want to go home. Them about it. I know not whether I should cheer Ufouria to be honest and blame it for not trying to create a deeper motivation for the characters. The game is in no way damaged by this lack of clarity, but it's definitely a paradox that nothing will be saved, but that you fight for yourself.
Conclusion
Even today the Ufouria as a witness on the game media's endless potential. I know the game better than I know any other interactive world. Each hook is included as a detail on my mental map. Each animation elicit a smile as they exemplify body comedy. Best of all, I remember Bop-Louies facial expressions when jumping becomes violations. The phrase makes me think of the cold, childish will that lay behind the time I wanted to be a dinosaur expert. This is because I had made a hope of even clone my own monster dinosaur could eat all I hated.
Some years and a schizophrenia diagnosis later sees the world quite differently out. But Ufouria, with its remarkable mixture of platform adventure, role play, absurdity, menneskedyr, colonization and eternal friendship remains back. Euphoria has been to games in terms utopia.
