The Wonder Years 3.07.08: Week 45 - Super Putty
Posted by Owain J. Brimfield on 03.07.2008
A gaming experience you can truly mould to your liking.
Welcome to the column where all gamers of a certain age come to wallow in 16-bit nostalgia. I'm your host, Owain J. Brimfield, and I'll be discussing some of the hidden gems and instant classics of gaming's golden era. Some of these games may crop up on the Wii's Virtual Console at some point, some may be consigned to the annals of history. Either way, they're worth tracking down if you missed them first time round, or replaying if you were lucky enough to catch them. Let's take a trip to:
SUPER PUTTY
(System 3, Super NES, 1993)
Firstly, apologies for those who may notice that this week's column is a day late. Anyone? Damn. Well, I won't bother regaling you with my broadband woes, and the infinitely cunning segue I had planned that would lead from talk of bandwidth to talk of putty. You'll just have to speculate as to what might have been. Yes, this week's subject is the sticky colorful stuff of children's playtimes the world over, fun to mould into rude shapes and even more fun to eat when you notice the packaging specifies "non toxic". Not that I ever did that. Or continue to do that. Anyways, Putty was originally a title released on the Amiga by System 3 (development house of the near-legendary International Karate +), apparently aimed at the twin demographics of young children and stoners. Unfortunately, neither groups of people possessed the necessary motor functions to master Putty's tricksy gaming mechanics, so the title was ported over to the Super NES and bestowed with the prefix "Super", as was damn near every game on the console, in an attempt to garner more attention.
The story itself should, quite frankly, have been enough to sell the game, as it's among the more ludicrous plot conceptions to come out of the early 1990s (and if you were gaming during that period, you know what standards of surrealness were being bandied around at the time). Putty himself is, as you can no doubt guess, a small blue blob of putty, hailing from Putty Moon. The moon of the putties has been taken over by the fantastically-named evil wizard (is there any other kind in gaming) Dazzledaze, who plans to - and I'm not kidding - capture all the putties, wrap them up and sell them as bubblegum. Eventually banished from his home planet, our rubbery hero has to find a way to return in order to defeat his nemesis - and what method of homecoming is more logical than enlisting a band of solar-powered robots to build a skyscraper that reaches back to Putty Moon? None in this game, that's for sure. Kudos on your bonkers-ness, System 3.
Gameplay itself sees you control Putty directly, an amorphous blob with all the distinct abilities that character description implies. He can jump, stretch, absorb, punch, inflate and morph with ease, making him one of the more versatile platforming characters of the time. Each of these actions has its subtleties - absorbing an enemy causes Putty to morph into a play-doh representation of said baddie, complete with any weaponry at its disposal; inflating too far causes Putty to explode, wiping out nearby enemies; and stretching allows him to navigate vast distances in a manner that feels strangely similar to the ninja rope in Worms. The game itself is played out across a frustratingly small number of screens (well, it's actually around ninety, which sounds large but despite some tricky bits won't take you long to get past), but sees Putty bouncing around the level (which scrolls vertically, not horizontally, in a vague twist on the established formula) trying to rescue the friendly robots and deposit them in a place where they can be put to use. Various pickups are available along the way to replenish Putty's health and pliability, as well as a glorious weapon that takes the form of false teeth and allows Putty to munch his enemies to death.
It's worth mentioning the enemies themselves, for they're a gorgeously varied bunch, ranging from cyborg carrots and plastic Nazi soldiers to some dude in a bathtub and a UFO-flying cat named Dweezil. What the character design achieves in ambition it matches in execution, as each enemy spouts an array of digitized voice samples throughout the game, with the highlight being the hilarious Scouse accents of the killer sausages. Also of note is one of the most bizarre bonus power-ups I can remember ever encountering, namely Uncle Ted - a hammond-organ playing cabaret performer who sits down, knocks out a little tune, and renders everything on the screen paralyzed. Just... weird. But good weird. You'll need him too, as some of the later screens are pleasingly challenging (and, thankfully, the game doesn't cop out by including a save feature, although there are plenty of level-skip codes available if you're a big wussy).
Although Super Putty is one of the more obscure games you can find on the Super NES, a new sequel has apparently been mooted for handheld consoles sometime this year - whether or not that will prove a success I'm not really sure. The game's theme, though, would be perfectly suited to the DS in particular. I'd never had the opportunity to play this title myself until I discovered that my girlfriend had somehow retained her copy of the cartridge since childhood, and pleasingly it's a title that still holds up well as a classic "old school"-style game, certainly well worth a punt. Whether or not you'll ever get the chance to give it a go is probably up for debate given Super Putty's relative rarity, but if I didn't pique you're interest with the bit about a cat flying a UFO, then you don't really deserve it anyway. If half the games on release today were as original as this, we'd be living in truly interesting times. Still, even if Super Putty has to go down in history as one of those hidden gems that passed 16-bit gamers by, it's still deserving of recognition here and now.
Super Putty trivia
Sound artist Richard Joseph was the guy who worked Brian May on the "pioneering" audio for lamented 16-bit crap-fest Rise of the Robots. Thankfully his work here is more enjoyable.
For some reason, the game also includes a MIDI version of the Joe 90 theme tune. Just bizarre.
The game did feature an even more obscure sequel named Putty Squad, which I have a feeling was only ever released in Europe, and unsurprisingly didn't do too well.
Reactions and interactions
First off we have a couple comments on last week's column about Desert Strike:
Posted by: ChErikS
"I rented these games endlessly for my Genesis (back when it seemed to make more sense to rent a game 5 or 6 times rather than buy it). One thing that always stood out in my mind was the Mechwarrior clone they made of the game. Everything was basically identical gameplay, missions, control, supplies, etc, but instead of a helicoptor you piloted a mech."
If the game you're referring is Future Cop: L.A.P.D. then it's probably no surprise to learn that this was in fact the spin-off of the Strike series that Future Strike was originally planned to be. Gotta love the mechs.
Posted by: David R.
"I thought Nuclear Strike was a better game (I guess that happens with a sequel)."
It probably does. My own favorite of the series was Urban Strike, but each to their own I guess.
A few comments related to my now-infamous [yeah, I wish] official all-time top 100 games:
Posted by: Youmanga
"Owain, dude, can you post your full top 100?"
Sorry man, the top 100 is far too valuable just to be giving away like that. If you're lucky, it may make an appearance in column number 100.
Finally, one of 411 Games' own calls me out:
Posted by: Mark Salmela
"Just a funny notice, you seem to have more "honorable mentions" then you do actual numbered titles on your top 100. Just seems every week is another honorable mention."
Bollocks. Yeah, it's true. I noticed this months ago, when I realized that I'd been placing titles according to where they fit into my all-time top 100 games ever, rather than actually having spent the time to knock up a top 100 specific to the 16-bit generation. And yes, it does seem to have the upshot that every week is an honorable mention. So going forward, I'll be removing that line, unless the game legitimately does fall into my all-time top century of games.
Incidentally, I see it's my 50th column coming up in a few weeks, so maybe we can expect something special along these lines to celebrate...
The Videosphere
Let's take a look at this week's video highlight. According to this video, it's the only gameplay footage of the game that exists on YouTube, and the guy who presents it is amusing enough that I won't doubt his claims by doing anything as hectic as research. He doesn't really seem to know too much about what he's doing, but the gameplay itself is engaging enough to watch.
General indulgences
Every week in this section I'll endeavor to provide you, the faithful readers, with a fascinating insight into the various forms of entertainment currently dominating my spare time.
This week, I have been mostly enjoying:
Inkball, the freeware game on Windows Vista, to which I've recently upgraded. I have to confess I have no idea whether the game is any good or whether it's a big pile of wank, but it's certainly some sort of addictive, and that has to count for something. Right?
Hypertension by Jon Gomm, an astounding blues guitarist from Leeds in the UK who manages to somehow play percussion on his guitar at the same time as actually playing the guitar. Look him up on YouTube, and check out the video of him performing 'Hey Child' live. Mesmerizing stuff.
A.W.O.L., the "classic" Jean-Claude Van Damme movie starring everyone's favorite Belgian action hero as a member of the Foreign Legion who… wait for it… goes AWOL. Entirely worth watching for the hilarious scene in which he befriends a ginger-haired young girl.
and re-ripping my albums. Yes, turns out Vista won't support my old Zen Touch MP3 player, so I'm forced to rip over 450 albums to get my music back on the computer. It'd be soul-destroying if I wasn't an anal retentive, so at least it gives me a chance to tidy up some scrappy filenames. Hooray for nerdiness!
And finally…
As always, reader feedback and suggestions are welcome, I respond to everything so just drop me a line or leave a comment. You can also check out my science fiction column "The Flux Capacitor" over at 411 Movies. Next week in "The Wonder Years" - a real 'nigma of a game [chortle]. Until then - keep it real, keep it retro.
