Thanks to Wolfman for helping with edits.
Video games, as with every creative enterprise, are iterative. Studios look back at older titles when developing new ones, trying to incorporate and build upon previous ideas. Games within the same series or by the same people do this all the time, sometimes unsuccessfully—DK: Jungle Climber’s response to DK: King of Swing’s lack of Donkey Kong Country elements was to awkwardly bring them in, and Donkey Kong 64 is a bloated aggravation of Banjo-Kazooie. However, this practice can also yield more polished, stronger works—Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest and Tropical Freeze wonderfully build upon their respective predecessors.
Ufouria: The Saga is the first and only title from Sunsoft’s Hebereke series to grace North America, even if it took until the Wii’s Virtual Console service. However, it did originally grace Europe and Australia, and several changes were made during its localization. (Image: Sunsoft)
A number of games borrow concepts from other developers’ works, too. JUJU blatantly cribs from Donkey Kong Country Returns, as Layers of Fear does P.T. SEGA’s Rhythm Thief & the Emperor’s Treasure takes notes from Level-5’s Professor Layton series. The Parascientific Escape trilogy clearly hoped to hone in on Zero Escape’s success. Klonoa’s core mechanic, where you grab enemies, hoist them above your head, and throw them as an attack brings Super Mario Bros. 2 to mind (though Klonoa is very much its own thing, unlike these other examples). And this sentiment perfectly leads us into Ufouria: The Saga, a 1991 cult classic that draws inspiration from a handful of Nintendo Entertainment System side scrollers.
Ufouria’s primarily an ode to Metroid of five years prior. You’re plopped in the wilderness, nearly everything’s out to kill you, and you grow stronger as you rescue your individually quirky friends and discover power-ups. Consequently, specific areas are inaccessible until you acquire specific abilities; your potential routes early on are especially limited. Some power-ups give a hero a new attack, while others enable new ways to traverse the map, like how default protagonist Bop-Louie can climb walls with his suction cups. You can recover health through generic pickups enemies drop (you start with ten hearts and can initially carry up to forty-nine) and increase your total life points by finding four life containers. Stronger enemies eventually begin appearing throughout the world, some of whom replace their weaker counterparts. Both games also let you crawl, freeze enemies to use as platforms, and employ password systems to “save” your progress.
Basically, Bop-Louie and his three buddies plummet down to this strange, alien realm. You have to save them, find three keys, and beat a large mutant to escape. (Image: Sunsoft)
However, Ufouria is a much kinder, more accessible game than Metroid. Arrows might flash on the screen if you’re going the wrong way, particularly if you’ve entered an area you’re currently unfit to explore. Two of the first pickups are a map and compass, ensuring you’re never lost and can locate hidden trinkets. Three color-coded Power Rings even show which room within their respective regions house a key. Collectible life containers let you heal yourself wherever, and you can actually refill them by finding medicine or visiting a magic waterfall. Even the basic act of jumping functions as an attack, a luxury bounty hunter Samus Aran went without (however, if you don’t hold the D-pad down, you won’t stomp on an enemy and will actually hurt yourself instead; adjusting to this took a little while).
Metroid’s iconic sense of isolation does not carry over, nor could it given Ufouria’s premise or bright visuals. In fact, there’s nary a bleak, black corridor in sight for most of The Saga. Not every weirdo who calls this wonderland home is dangerous, either—a blue bird happily gives you a lift to another area if you return her lost egg. And though Ufouria’s limited, generic dialogue kneecaps it, there is a sense of camaraderie between Bop-Louie and his pals. Samus rarely hangs out with friends, and when she does, they usually die.
Sometimes, baddies drop a “Popoon” balloon upon dying, which you can grab and throw at other baddies. Between that mechanic and the game’s four-man roster, Ufouria also becomes evocative of Super Mario Bros. 2, which is a positive. (Image: Sunsoft)
Saving Bop-Louie’s buddies—orange lizard Freeon-Leon, white ghost Shades, and green frog Gil—is your first priority. All three are initially suffering from amnesia, forcing you to restore their memories by beating them senseless. These fights are bland and straightforward: both combatants grab and toss stuff at each other. Unlike the game’s other, more elaborate bosses, you’re also given a separate life bar. Hitting your friend eight times rewards you with their recruitment.
And that gives you access to their gimmicks: Freeon-Leon can swim and safely walk along icy surfaces, Shades can jump higher and descends slower than his peers, and Gil can walk and indefinitely jump underwater. Each hero can also find a “secret weapon,” a chargeable projectile attack that has beneficial secondary effects: Bop-Louie’s is necessary to damage an armored boss, Freeon-Leon’s freezes foes, and Gil’s breaks obstructive blocks. Overall, though, Bop-Louie is the “best” character because he’s the fastest runner and jumper, so you’ll probably stick with him most of the time.
When you face a boss, doors close behind you in a manner reminiscent of Mega Man. Metroid may be the game’s main influence, but The Saga at times feels like a melting pot of NES classics. (Image: Sunsoft)
Overall, Ufouria’s map is fine and manageable; very little of it feels like wasted space, it’s smaller than Metroid’s, and it’s easier to keep track of where you are thanks to Ufouria’s colorful backgrounds and landmarks (in comparison, Metroid’s dreary labyrinths blur together). However, while Ufouria’s environments are perfectly serviceable, they are rather generic; even by 1991, starting in a grassland before moving on to caves, mountains, temples, and cloudy vistas wasn’t groundbreaking. A few areas also employ thematically-appropriate gimmicks, like how lava and mine carts litter the underground mines. And a few places require you to manipulate your surroundings—clogging a waterfall with a boulder or filling a chasm with water, for example—to fully explore them. Nothing especially intricate, but the attempt to flesh these places out is appreciated.
Combat isn’t one of Ufouria’s strengths (nor is it one of Metroid’s). Standard enemies are simple obstacles to jump on or over, with only a few capable of throwing projectiles. Unfortunately, that lackluster variety bleeds over into Ufouria’s bosses, too. While the duels against Bop-Louie’s friends are unexciting, the bigger, more impressive “normal” bosses still aren’t anything special. Any escalation in complexity is ultimately undermined by how strictly these goons adhere to a template: they move across the arena, you stomp on or toss junk at them, and you win. Save for a couple of underwater fights only Gil can handle and that armored one, nothing really takes advantage of the skills you acquire. Even the final boss isn’t much of a threat; just stay to his left, stomp the green glutton’s mini-me, grab the Popoon, throw it at the giant’s glowing weak point, and repeat the process seven more times.
These totems spawn an endless number of frogs you can stomp, some of whom drop health pickups. Taking advantage of these is a slow but easy way to grind for health. (Image: Sunsoft)
A few other hiccups mar The Saga. Getting sent back all the way to the map’s starting point upon dying can be punishing (though, admittedly, this is an issue Ufouria shares with many of its contemporaries, and thankfully dying does not strip you of any of the items you’ve gained). While this isn’t a pervasive problem, sometimes you’ll need to quickly alternate between characters, and constantly going through the sub-menu to do so gets clunky.
Thankfully, none of Ufouria’s issues are dealbreakers. It’s a solid platformer, one elevated with other strengths. Naoki Kodaka’s adventurous score is great. Ufouria’s character sprites hold up nicely; all four playable weirdos brim with as much personality as the NES could convey: they smile when highlighted on the sub-menu, a nice bounce and stretch animation accentuates their weight when jumping, and their arms sway back and forth while running. Standard enemies lack their level of detail, but still mesh swimmingly with The Saga’s charmingly exotic, off-kilter world—only here could killer clowns, sentient lips, and expressionless, bulging blobs thrive.
Ufouria’s crude cast kinda reminds me of Princess Tomato and the Salad Kingdom, another off-beat NES game I savor. (Image: Sunsoft)
Sadly, Sunsoft’s Hebereke series is largely an enigma to the western world. While it isn’t exactly a blockbuster in Japan and has shifted genres multiple times, the series did survive for a number of years, receiving its final installment, a puzzle spin-off, in 2004. But Ufouria: The Saga’s about to get a second wind: a re-release was slated to grace modern platforms this year, but it seems we’re actually getting a remake with a facelift reminiscent of Yoshi’s Woolly World. Wait, it looks like Sunsoft’s working on a full-blown sequel, one where Bop-Louie and company will defend their home from invading aliens! Whatever Bop-Louie’s comeback entails, it’s exciting; Ufouria holds up respectably well and, assuming future Hebereke entries hit North American shores, I’ll keep following his exploits.
Nope, Bop-Louie doesn’t die on the way back to his home planet. He ultimately decides to stay with his friends, promising “their saga will continue forever…” (Image: Sunsoft)
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