Developed/Published by: System 3 / U.S. Gold
Released: 1993
Completed: 19th May, 2015
Completion: Finished it, but with the unlimited live cheat because christ.
Trophies / Achievements: n/a
This opening might be a little “inside baseball” (a reference which is, ironically, “inside baseball” because I have no idea what inside baseball is or was) but recently there was discussion on Twitter about something or other—actually i think it was on Super Mario Sunshine, which I involved myself in because of words I had over it in my write-up of Super Mario 3D Land—and Tim Rogers (Videoball) humorously dismissed Bennett Foddy (QWOP)’s opinion by saying something along the lines of “yeah, but you like Amiga platformers.”
Now, I like Amiga platformers, and there’s a reason for this, similar to why I enjoy a lot of games that can be characterised fairly or not as “kusoge”; they often do something absolutely unexpected from what is expected of their genre or accepted conventions. A lot of Amiga (actually, I’ll round this out to “home computer”) platformers come from a strange world where Mario might have been mentioned in passing, but his design wasn’t dominant. Neither was a visual style defined by Japanese artists. As a result, you end up with lots and lots of weird, often wildly unplayable worlds and ideas; everything from sedate problem solving with Dizzy to insane, drugged-out messes like Top Banana.
I think they’re fascinating! It’s like looking at the evolution of a distant tribe, and then once contact has been made, seeing what happens—seeing Sonic-inspired games like Oscar or (famously) Zool come into being.
Anyway, here’s Super Putty, and if you’re wondering why I’m playing Super Putty rather than Putty (my original intention) it’s because, and here’s another quirk of home computer games, there was only one fire button on old home computer joysticks. As a result, developers had to get quite… innovative to get characters to do the range of things you’d expect. In the case of Putty, which hinges on Putty’s ability to stretch and morph and absorb, what they did was add an insane lag on your first input. It genuinely takes about a second for Putty to respond. I couldn’t hack it, almost gave up entirely and realized that this wouldn’t cut it on the SNES, where a mildly-improved version was released. Hurrah!
I think Super Putty is gorgeous. I love this kind of western pixel art—of the era of the Bitmap Brothers, etc.—and if you look at one of the level maps, it’s just stunning. Abstract but evocative, clean and clear.
It’s a shame, then, that Super Putty is a design mess for no good reason at all. You’ve got a pliable hero with plenty of options for puzzles, and a plot that revolves around collecting robots and taking them to the exit, all in really nice, vertically-scrolling levels. But in classic Amiga-platformer stylee, instead of all that it’s a mad survive-em-up, with millions of baddies spawning on screen, loads of points where you can’t avoid being hit, things that hurt you even though it’s not obvious, and so on.
Rather than doing anything clever, the game devolves into abusing Putty’s “smart bomb” explosion to try and avoid mobbed areas, gritting your teeth through the enemies you can’t seem to kill for no clear reason, and brute forcing your way through. I certainly can’t imagine trying to do this without infinite lives.
I must say though, that had I got this in the Amiga 600 bundle I pined for, I’d have played the shit out of it, lag or not, and would remember it fondly. It does look great, Putty is charming indeed, and if it was more of a Dizzy than a Top Banana it’d be perfect. Ah well.
Will I ever play it again? No but if you can guess why I played it in the first place…
Final Thought: Apparently the Amiga 600 was manufactured in the town I grew up in, which means that if my dad had known that I’d probably have ended up with a dodgy one from a guy down the pub rather than the flash 386DX I got instead. The PC was the right choice.
