Ufouria: The Saga

Despite the huge success of the NES in North America, many of the best Famicom titles never reached our shores. Nintendo of America exercised strict quality controls that limited the number of games that a company could publish to a mere five games per year, and sadly, not all of the games that failed to make the cut had obvious cultural barriers. Hebereke is one such title that got the axe, yet it has all the hallmarks of a classic NES title and even a bit of innovation. It did manage to be localized for PAL territories as Ufouria: The Saga, but there was no such luck across the pond. While western audiences are generally more familiar with that version, here I will focus on the Japanese original, as that is the one that I primarily have played.

By 1991, Sunsoft had firmly established themselves as a major source of quality NES games, both with great originals like Blaster Master and surprisingly good licensed games like Batman [バットマン]. Hebereke most definitely is a title that lives up to that pedigree, and even outside of Sunsoft's titles, it would stand out. The title roughly translates to "drunkenness." For such a cute and seemingly innocent game, that almost seems inappropriate, but the world of Hebereke is quite psychedelic and dreamlike, and somehow, it does fit. The game also has a great irreverent sense of humor that plays on conventions from other games. If you don't immediately start the game, the protagonist will come on the screen and start to tell his story only to change his mind and tell you to read the instruction manual, instead. This attitude makes the character more endearing than most 8-bit protagonists, although sadly there isn't nearly enough of it.

Speaking of the protagonist, you play as a beanie-clad penguin named Hebe. Although it's never fully explained, he is trapped in some kind of alternate universe and seeking to get back to his home in the real world. His quest revolves around a mysterious locked door, and over the course of the game, he teams up with several assorted creatures to complete his adventure. Each character has a distinct design, with a cat girl, O-Chan, a ghost Sukazaemon, and an amphibian/fish, Jennifer, rounding out the party. They even have distinct personalities with the ghost and his old-fashioned mannerisms sticking out the most, and each one plays significantly different from the others and will have to be used to progress through the game. Hebe is the fastest and can climb walls, O-Chan can swim on top of water and walk on ice without falling, Sukezaemon, being a ghost, can float, and last but not least, Jennifer can dive underwater. The controls do have one odd quirk, which is that you must push down in order to damage enemies by jumping, but the game at least explains this in the aforementioned intro. This is contrary to other games like Super Mario Bros., but you do slowly learn to adjust, and it becomes less of an issue.

The open aspect of the world and the focus on platforming draws a comparison to Metroid, but Hebereke actually has a number of innovations that make it stand on its own. Besides, having the variety of characters with unique controls, it also features a good mapping system, and it's one of the earliest Metroidvanias that I can recall to achieve this. The Goonies II did include a map a few years earlier, but it was not very helpful. When the player first starts, the map in Hebereke might not seem much better, but a few upgrades later, you will be easily able to see your location as well as the location of various items. The game is a bit more hand-holding than other games, as the game will literally point you in the right direction if you're heading towards an area that you cannot access. Initially, the game might still seem difficult as your characters aren't terribly durable, but luckily, there are a number of health power-ups scattered around the world, and a few are even close to the starting area. Each can only be used once, but they reappear if you have to continue the game, so once you realize this, you can easily reach maximum health and face any of the bosses without much worry of dying, including the final boss. There is a decent amount of backtracking, but the progression is mostly logical, and the visuals do a good job of creating landmarks, so even without using the map, it's not likely that you would get lost. Sometimes, going through a door will take you to an unexpected spot on the map, but it's not too terribly disorienting, and there was just one puzzle that had me scratching my head. The world isn't very large, and since the combat is easy, it shouldn't take too long to beat the game, but despite the low difficulty, it's still quite enjoyable to play.

Lastly, I'd like to get back to the audio and visuals. Again, the graphics are great by NES standards looking quite colorful, and the characters are even pretty well animated with detailed motions for some actions like a quick turn when changing directions mid-run. The soundtrack is likewise excellent, but that is hardly a surprise considering earlier Sunsoft games. There are a few pieces, like the snow and cave themes, that seem like they could be leftovers from Batman, but the main theme is quite peppy and memorable, and there are others like the water theme that seem to add to the dream-like nature of the visuals and storyline. There aren't all that many songs, truth be told, but everything here sounds good and helps to build the atmosphere of the various areas. The sound effects, however, are merely adequate.

Overall, it really is a shame that Hebereke never made it to the western hemisphere, as I think it would have been quite a popular game. Sadly, there was also never a proper follow-up, despite numerous other games being released under the Hebereke [へべれけ] banner in Japan. None of these feature similar gameplay to the Famicom title, instead inserting the characters into racing, fighting, and puzzle games that would otherwise be unrelated. As mentioned previously, the original game did manage to see an NES release in Europe and Australia, but they re-titled it to Ufouria, and several of the characters were redesigned and arguably made inferior. Hebe was turned into a creepy looking snowman with bug eyes, and O-Chan was changed into a dopey lizard. All of the characters had new names, as well. Perhaps, Sunsoft thought the game was too cutesy for European sensibilities, but the changes just seem to interfere with the charm of the game. The story also feels more generic, as the game does not have much of a sense of humor compared to the Japanese version. Other than these changes and being localized into English, though, it's essentially the same game and would be acceptable if you cannot play the original. This version did eventually get released on the Wii in North America, and luckily, there is also a fan translation of Hebereke that more faithfully translates the original game to English and does not convert the game to Ufouria. Regardless of which version you end up playing, Hebereke is a unique but accessible title that warrants more attention beyond collectors' circles, but its relative rarity may prevent it from being anything more than a cult classic.

It’s always fascinating to search for and discover the hidden gems buried beneath the surface. One might cynically chide someone for making this effort and attest it to gaining some sort of nebulous hipster cred. I believe most people who take off their proverbial floatation devices that the general public provides and sink deeper into the water do so to achieve a more well-rounded perspective of a medium’s history or a specific genre they enjoy. The unearthed gleaming jewel in this context is Ufouria: The Saga, or Hebereke as it’s known in its native Japan. Back in early 2018 when Nintendo decided to close the Wii Shop Channel’s doors, I scrambled frantically to seize the waning opportunity to purchase all of the rarities that the vast catalog bestowed. The appeal of downloading Ufouria on my Wii wasn’t only due to the fact that this port was the only (legally) available release in North America, but because the “Metroidvania” tag caught my attention. Everyone knows the Adam and Eve of the Metroidvania genre are Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night, so discovering a “foreign” game fitting the tag that predates both games by at least a whole generation immediately spurred my sense of curiosity. I was still skeptical of Ufouria’s general quality given that the first Metroid game had convinced me that the design philosophy of the Metroidvania genre could not flourish on the primitive hardware of the NES. Ufouria is indeed guilty of having plenty of rough snags in its gameplay and presentation, but the overall execution of what we’d come to associate with the Metroidvania genre is surprisingly solid.

“Alex Kidd on acid” should’ve been the tagline for Ufouria: The Saga. The similarities between the game and Sega’s pre-Sonic hit on the Master System fall on their bright aesthetic and more methodical approach to a 2D platformer’s pacing. Those comparisons end when Ufouria takes the twee, childish whimsy of Alex Kidd and dips it head first in a lysergic liquid and totally trips balls. A group from the land of Ufouria gets lost and separated in a strange land, and one of the four friends must retrieve the rest of them and set a course back home. Although the premise is simple, I neglected to mention that the savior is a snowman searching for a dragon, a ghost, and an anglerfish. Also, it’s worth mentioning that some of the platforms that the snowman must hop onto to hold his ground are colored faces that look up with a deranged, closed smile. Some platforms lend a hand in letting the player climb upward by providing a drooping strand of saliva viscous enough to hold, and the creatures that offer flight assistance look like the abominable lovechild of a chicken fetus and a Teletubby. Enemies range from blobs, clowns, detached lips with long tongues, frog statues, crows that drop anvils, etc. The consistent factor with this eclectic range of enemy types is that upon defeating them, something that resembles a molested-looking pillow pops out from their remnants which the player can use as a projectile weapon. By my interpretation, it might be the soul of the enemy, but it’s hurting my brain attempting to make sense of it. If not for the complications of using licensed music, an 8-bit rendition of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” should play on loop throughout the game. The hallucinatory, Japanese weirdness of Ufouria is a charming factor that makes it aesthetically interesting.

Ufouria’s cast of strange characters are the crux of the game’s Metroidvania design. Following the path of least resistance the beanie-wearing Bop-Louie can traverse through will lead to a battle with one of his friends, whose hostility towards him stems from amnesia. Once Bop-Louie literally knocks some sense into them, they join the party for the duration of the game. Once unlocked, each partner can use their distinctive talents to uncover the hidden areas that Bop-Louie cannot access. Freeon-Leon’s scaly, orange body is the only one adhesive enough to naturally walk on the ice without slipping, and he can swim on any water’s surface if a pool lies between gaps of land. The cool Mr. Shades uses his weightless, incorporeal form to glide across gaps, and the bulbous Gil’s gravitational grip on water allows him to submerge himself in any body of it like he was walking. Bop-Louie isn’t made irrelevant by his friends either as he eventually granted the ability to scale up any surface like climbing a ladder. All of them also have specific extra abilities for either traversal or combat. For example, Bop-Louie can retract his head like a spring to hit enemies at a distance, and Gil’s egg-shaped bombs that he coughs up are essential to breaking the brick walls that inhibit the end game collectables. None of the characters stop being useful, as they are all distinctive enough to provide a special service (even if Gil’s swimming ability is more proficient than Freeon-Leon’s). I wish I didn’t have to keep pausing the game to select one but considering how primeval the notion of playing as multiple characters was in the NES days, I’ll accept the slightly inconvenient process. At least it’s less tedious than the character swapping in Castlevania III, whose glacial shift felt so long that it should’ve been accompanied by elevator music. The big question of why the designs of Bop-Louie and Freeon Leon have been changed in the international versions from a penguin and a guy in a catsuit is unclear. Perhaps a human being wouldn’t have been as weird, and kids would find an adorable penguin with a detachable head to be unsettling as opposed to the more…biodegradable, transient snowman?

In the first Metroid on the NES, the game’s sense of directing the player through an environment with a nonlinear world design felt a little too amorphous to uphold what would become the Metroidvania design philosophy. I thought that Ufouria would be subject to the same lack of form, as I attributed Metroid’s sparseness to the unadorned hardware of the NES. Fortunately, Ufouria proved to me that developers didn’t need a successive console generation for the Metroidvania genre to blossom to its ingenious potential. Ufouria effectively arranges its progression into something readily recognizable as a Metroidvania title. An arrow will point out the path the player is intended to travel on when the game begins, which would compromise on the subtleties that make the genre so enticing. After a certain point, the game leaves the player to their own devices, so the first few moments of hand holding can be forgiven for an early title. The game makes it abundantly clear which of the four characters are applicable to an obstacle or situation, and a map is even offered as a navigational aid. The map may be primitively rendered with gray blocks representing the layout but considering the Metroid genesis point of the genre didn’t offer one, it’s a monumental leap in progress.

Ufouria’s inaccessible jaggedness stems from a few choices that are as bizarre as its presentation. Evidently, one of Ufouria’s biggest influences was the first Legend of Zelda, and these apparent influences did not translate well. Checkpoints are essential to the world design of the Metroidvania game, as finding these places of respite are great rewards for exploration to relieve the player. Ufouria offers a password system, which I find especially inappropriate and dysfunctional for this kind of game despite its ubiquity in the NES era. However, this isn’t even the prime grievance relating to the game’s method of saving the player’s progress. When the player dies, they are transported back to square one where the adventure started, with everything done up to then still saved at least. It works in The Legend of Zelda because the land of Hyrule was small and densely mapped. In a game like Ufouria, however, where the world is vast and requires the select talents of four different characters, walking back to the place where the penalty was enacted is such a slog. The player’s maximum health can be enhanced with items found on the field similar to Zelda’s heart containers, but collecting one does not fully replenish those containers. The player will most likely find themselves around the starting, depleted level of health, and the nuggets of health that spawn out of enemies only increase it by the quantity of a crumb. It isn’t a problem as the enemies are facile products of the environment rather than animalistic savages. That is, until the final boss of the game, which finds the player having to grind immensely to fill those containers in preparation.

Ufouria’s combat is just as unyielding. The player can always throw the perturbed soul cushions, but a simpler way is to channel Mario and flatten enemies like pancakes with their feet. What the game doesn’t tell the player is that they must hold down on the D-Pad to engage the stomping position, lest they take damage. It seems simple, yet how the player intended to figure this out and not see it as a penalty is beyond me. It oversteps the practice of trial and error a bit. Even though this is the more straightforward method of disposing of the land’s wacky inhabitants, pillow-throwing is the only way to dispose of bosses. Jumping on the heads of the naked, wide-eyed, big-lipped purple bosses to then chuck the hefty bag at them takes place for all the bosses, even though each one of them is intended for each of the four playable characters. Even the final boss is a slightly deviated variant of this. The process becomes too formulaic to hold any real engagement.

Ufouria: The Saga surprised me in more ways than one. The Japanese producers at Sunsoft probably thought that the bizarre presentation and progression of the early Metroidvania that hadn’t been solidified quite yet would be too disorienting for us North Americans, so they deferred it from our soil until the game was a peculiar relic of gaming’s past. While this decision most likely prohibited the title from achieving considerable success, I’m somewhat glad that the game serves as a point of reference in the evolution of one of my favorite video game genres. Despite it being released before Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night, I wouldn’t classify Ufouria as a “proto-Metroidvania” game. While the fabric of Ufouria still shares the rudimentary properties that stain the NES era, it’s incredibly impressive that everything in its foundation still sustains the modern definition of a Metroidvania. With its offbeat quirks and charming outlandishness, this NES oddity shouldn’t be forgotten.

Very solid Metroidvania title which features some surprisingly quality-of-life stuff for an NES game (a map!) and has very amusing sprites and enemies. Exploring around is a joy.

The only major issue is maybe the platforming. some jumps just feel like you should/shouldn't make it but then you do. Don't get me started on the one treasure chest involving freezing the little flying rats. The difficulty also just spikes towards the end with some tricky bosses (the one cat knight has a move that wouldn't feel out of place as part of the entourage of a later-day Hollow Knight boss).

Kind of ignored back in the day due to it being released when people would be clamouring for a Super Nintendo, Ufouria is such an easy recommendation, especially if you like scrambling to find a cute Metroidvania.