Bugaboo the Flea

Producer: Quicksilva
Memory Required: 48K
Recommended Retail Price: £6.95
Language: machine code
Author: Paco & Paco (Indescomp)

The first unusual thing about this game is that it isn't a British program. Authors Paco & Paco are Spanish and Quicksilva are hoping for more games from them in the future. That shouldn't be any problem as far as popularity goes - Bugaboo the Flea is going to be a big hit. Not only is it beautifully drawn and animated, but the colours on the screen are as burningly bright as has ever been seen on the Spectrum.

THIS IS WHAT YOU DO

Quicksilva, as usual, provide you with a charming and utterly irrelevant story on the inlay, but all the controls are indicated once the program runs. You are a Bugaboo, a harmless flea of this parish, only you're a long way from home. The Walt Disney-like film intro shows Bugaboo, jumping here and there over a highly coloured alien terrain and for all I know, humming the 'Busy Bee' song to himself, when all of a sudden he jumps down this narrow fissure in the ground, and down, and down, and down. It's all quite breathtaking. Eventually he reaches the bottom of the gorge and the game begins in earnest.

You must now get Bugaboo out of the gorge and back to the surface. One reviewer says in his notes that you score points according to the time it takes you to do this, but I found the game much too engaging to be bothered about a small thing like points!

The control keys are simplicity itself; 1 = hop left, 0 = hop right. At the bottom of the screen is a bar indicating strength of hop. When you depress the desired direction key, Bugaboo turns in that direction. Then you release the key when the indicator is at the desired strength and Bugaboo leaps away. This could all be very easy, but the line of light, which flashes up the strength of indicator, does so very fast and it's extremely difficult to judge exactly the correct moment. The second you release the jump key it freezes the indicator to show you how wrong you were...

Another difficulty is the design of the alien gorge, which is a series of overhanging ledges, covered in mushrooms and foliage. Unless the flea lands safely on a higher ledge, he just keeps falling until he reaches the floor again. A further hazard is a yellow flying dragon which has a liking for fleas. At first this appalling monster leaves you alone, but after a few minutes he enters and gobbles you up. End of life. But you can start again immediately, whereupon he reappears, each time sooner than the last, so you've got less and less time to get to the top. Aborting the game offers the option of starting afresh, in which case the yellow meanie stays away for longer.

GENERAL

As the playing area is considerably greater than the screen you can scroll left/right or up/down by using the cursor keys in addition to hopping left to right. The scrolling is very smooth. The design and animation of Bugaboo is absolutely excellent, and so is that of the background. It is quite easy to forget that you are actually watching a picture generated by your Spectrum.

COMMENTS

Keyboard positions: easy to use
Joystick option: none provided, scrolling could be by AGF or Protek
Keyboard play: positive
Use of colour: very good
Graphics: excellent
Sound: very good
Skill levels: none
Lives: 1

I think that together with Ant Attack, Quicksilva have come up with the two best games of 1983, and as far as arcade games for the Spectrum go, they could well be the best of 1984 too.

The keys are well positioned and easy to use. The use of colour is very good, and the sound is some of the best I've heard recently.

Bugaboo is a high quality arcade standard game, and it's highly addictive too. This game will definitely be a top seller!

The colourful graphics are an easy match for Manic Miner. It's a delight to play and mind-blowingly frustrating.

Bugaboo (Quicksilva) features a likeable little flea (if that's not a contradiction in terms) which, due to some unfortunate time warp perhaps, has fallen through the inky spaces between worlds and ended up somewhere rather unpleasant. What will our micro nipper find there... will it ever survive? I had several goes at the game, reacting differently each time to it. Sometimes I felt sympathetic as the poor creature tried desperately to escape from its pursuers, sometimes an evil grin and a wicked heart triumphed as the poor fool smashed its head for the hundredth time. Love or loathing, there's always a strong feeling for the flea!

Producer: Quicksilva, 48K
£6.95 (1)
Author: Indescomp

One of the most colourful and maddeningly addictive games of the pre-Christmas period, 'Bugaboo' boasts feature film titles and an engaging hero in the flea. Bugaboo has fallen into a deep gorge and must hop his way out, by leaping from ledge to ledge. The strength of leap is determined by releasing the key when the bar indicator at the bottom of the screen reaches the desired level. As it moves extremely fast, this is not an easy task. The gorge is swamped with vegetation which gets in the way, and there's an appalling yellow dragon which pops up and eats Bugaboo. 2 keys control left/right hops and the cursors scroll the screen. Excellent, colourful graphics with very smooth movement, good sound and hiqhly recommended. No joystick option. CRASH rating: addictive qualities 90%, overall 91% M/C.

Producer: Quicksilva, 48K
£6.95 (1)
Author: Indescomp

One of the most colourful and maddeningly addictive games of the pre-Christmas period, 'Bugaboo' boasts feature film titles and an engaging hero in the flea. Bugaboo has fallen into a deep gorge and must hop his way out, by leaping from ledge to ledge. The strength of leap is determined by releasing the key when the bar indicator at the bottom of the screen reaches the desired level. As it moves extremely fast, this is not an easy task. The gorge is swamped with vegetation which gets in the way, and there's an appalling yellow dragon which pops up and eats Bugaboo. 2 keys control left/right hops and the cursors scroll the screen. Excellent, colourful graphics with very smooth movement, good sound and hiqhly recommended. No joystick option. CRASH rating: addictive qualities 90%, overall 91% M/C.

As summer poises, ready for the onslaught of fab new games around Christmas, CRASH takes a look back at some of the major games we have reviewed in the past to see if they (and the reviews) stand the test of time. MATTHEW UFFINDELL and LLOYD MANGRAM take keyboard and reputation in hand...

Of Both Bugaboo and 3D Ant Attack, we predicted 'great things' and went out on a limb after a few glasses of Quicksilva's champagne to say that both games were in the top class. Evidently sales and popularity in the CRASH HOT-LINE have borne this out, less perhaps in the case of Bugaboo.

No one has ever bettered the loading screen sequence on Bugaboo, with its totally cinematic titles. It's not necessarily a point in the game's favour, but it surely does get you in the right frame of mind to play it.

As the months go by and software improves, past hits seem to disappear out of memory, Bugaboo is still one of my favourite games on the market. The graphics are among the best, and I rate it around the Jet Set Willy, Atic Atac class. After seeing so much great software over the last several months, this game still has a fantastic addictive quality and is still one of the best games produced for the Spectrum.
MU

The thing that still strikes about Bugaboo is the unusual and attractive screen layout. But it's not only good to look at, it's also cleverly designed to make life difficult. Everything about the game, as far as I'm concerned still stands up well to later software. Any game loses much of its addictivity once conquered and I know a number of letter writers have said that they don't want to play it again. But to me, it seems that Bugaboo always demands skill in timing and forward planning to beat it.
LM

(Matthew) I wouldn't quarrel with any of the ratings in the original review, and if anyone asks me what should be their first game for the Spectrum I tell them, Bugaboo.

(Lloyd) I wouldn't argue with the graphics rating or playability, perhaps the addictive rating was a trifle high - it has something to do with the dragon! He's a nuisance!

ORIGINAL REVIEW

Use of Computer: 90%
Graphics: 95%
Playability: 90%
Getting Started: 95%
Addictive Qualities: 90%
Value for Money: 85%
Overall: 92%

MACHINE: Spectrum 48K
JOYSTICK: No
CATEGORY: Arcade
SUPPLIER: Quicksilva
PRICE: £6.95

Bugaboo has fallen from space on to the surface of a very strange planet which is covered with coloured rocks, mushrooms, an. vegetation. He discovers that he can almost fly, and while jumping about the surface, falls into a deep cavern and lands on the bottom, unharmed.

It's your job to see that Bugaboo gets back to the top of by making him jump from ledge to ledge, and if that isn't enough, there is a yellow flying monster which is determined to eat Bugaboo at the first opportunity.

To guide Bugaboo, you have control over which way he jumps, left or right, and the strength with which he does so. The method of scoring is by getting the fellow out of the cavern in the shortest possible time.

You can scroll the picture in four directions to see where you are going to jump to. It was funny to see Bugaboo stop in mid-air as the screen was being updated, although this was very fast and didn't make the game look bad.

If you like a challenge, then this is it. Be patient though. It's not that easy to get back to the top!

We look at the best and the worst releases in a month which offers new games from top software houses Fantasy and Ultimate.

In Bugaboo - 48K Spectrum, £6.95 - the player takes on the persona of Bugaboo the flea, which must leap out of a pit, from pit to pit and from mushroom to mushroom while avoiding the horrific monster which wishes to eat Bugaboo. The novel movement of short and long jumps disguises for some time the point that it is a clever development of the monster-in-the-maze game.

Produced by Quicksilva, 13, Palmerston Road, Southampton SO1 1LL.

48K Spectrum
£6.95
Quicksilva

If you have ever had a dog you will know how agile the flea is. Bugaboo is a highly original new program which features an athletic yellow (lea of prodigious jumping ability. His task is to escape from the bottom of the screen to the exit at the top. Attempting to thwart his ambition is a vicious yellow pterodactyl which swoops around in menacing fashion.

One of the most attractive features of Bugaboo is its landscape; a multi-leveled collection of dark caves and jagged ledges, decorated with psychedelic coloured mushrooms and shrubs. Cursor keys allow you to scroll left and right, up and down, to view the prospects in store.

Controlling Bugaboo's leaps is a tricky business, not helped by the fact that the on-tape instructions are not very explicit. Since this is a Quicksilva game the packaging contains only a silly blurb, with possibly the most appalling rhyme ever written. Nonetheless, Bugaboo is one of the most interesting and enjoyable games to appear.