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Ruff n' Tumble is an action platform game designed and developed specifically for the Amiga by Wunderkind Software, and published by the legendary Renegade label back in 1994. It originally came on two disks, was not hard drive installable, but would play on any OCS or ECS machine; making full use of the stock 000 processor.
The Title Screen
Ruff: History In The Making
Platform shoot 'em-ups may have become common on the Amiga, but by the later 1980's very few stood out beyond the crowd. Then in 1987, along came The Bitmap Brothers - founded by Mike Montgomery and John Phillips - who set about creating a series of titles which would push the Amigas capabilities beyond the competition. After releasing five successive blockbuster Amiga titles in a row (inc: Xenon2, Speedball2), the team decided to form their own production company, Renegade, in 1991. The very first game to appear on the Renegade label was the smash hit Gods - an action platformer which set an impressive benchmark for the genre. More titles followed, including: Magic Pockets (1991), and Fire & Ice (1992); and so perhaps not surprisingly these early successes paved the way towards an even greater graphically impressive platformer, a larger game with bigger and better weapons, and fast and frantic action.
The job of developing such a monster fell to Wunderkind Software, under the watchful eyes of Jason Perkins - a coder who's notoriety spread after the 1990 Activision adventure Time Machine; graphic artist Robin Levy came over from System 3 on the back of Last Ninja 3, Myth, and Putty; and music maestro Jason Page became a Renegade stalwart after scoring the likes of Fire & Ice and Sensible Soccer. The trio took a over year to plan, design and code a game that would push the Amiga to it's technical limits, and the result was nothing short of a sensation.
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Ruff n' Ready?
The game itself opens with a nice graphical rendition of the main character and a patch of grungy metal music. We can enter a level password or switch off the in-game music via the 'O' key options screen, or we can press fire to head into the action.
The rather trippy backstory tells us that we play a character known as Ruff Rogers, who, while playing with his marbles in the park one day, loses one down a rabbit hole and decides to follow it down. The rabbit hole turns out to be a teleport to an alien planet; a planet ruled by the mad Dr. Destiny and his fearsome robot army of Tinheads. Ruff finds that his marble collection has been scattered across the planet, and embarks on a quest to reclaim his collection, and free the planet from Destiny and his Tinhead Army. Well, so much for the plot!
Section 1 - The Fantasy Forest
Small Man, Big Gun, and a Blonde Flick
The first section of the game is known as The Fantasy Forest; which is split into four unique levels and a boss section at the end. The player instantly jumps into a world populated by nasty little creatures and traps, framed by a memorable acid house soundtrack. Our only defence is a small pistol and whatever abilities the player has to jump over and avoid the landscape, but this isn't too much of a problem to begin with. To the left of the player is a blue marble, and looking around we can see a few more marbles and coins, as well as a few easy Tinheads to destroy. A press of the fire button will quickly dispatch those robots, enabling a little exploration. At the top of the screen is a handy display bar showing all the variables of the game, starting with a lives meter. The player will start with three lives (shown as two, the final life is taken away at zero) - and more lives can be collected and rewarded as the game goes on. Each life also depends on the 'health' of the player. The health bar is represented by a number of red hearts at the top of the screen, and we have three hearts to begin with - which are destroyed every time a player gets hit -but there are more to pick up, and a maximum of five can be aquired at any one time. Only after going through all their hearts does a player drop a whole life.
The second thing to notice are the marbles. The object of each level is to collect the required number of marbles to unlock the exit door. On level 1.1, the player only has to find nine marbles; three red, three green and three blue, and there are always more marbles on a level than the player actually needs to complete it. On later levels it may be possible to find 'level-up' marbles; which will complete the requirement of that particular colour; but in general the player must hunt them down individually.
Section 1 - The Fantasy Forest
One more area of note is in the weapons department. The player will start with a single shot pistol with a limited amount of auto-recharging ammo. We can take care of the baddies a little more quickly by holding down the fire button to trigger rapid fire - but doing so for an extended period will quickly drain our supplys, and as ammo dries up, so does our rate of fire, resulting in the player becoming much more vulnerable. Luckily, there are always plenty of ammo-replenishing power pills on each level to ensure we have enough fire-power to get the job done. There are also several decent weapons pickups too, including: the Machine Gun, Cold Lazer, Hot Lazer, Flame Thrower and a Rocket Launcher. All of these weapons have a limited lifespan, and players must be quick to use them or find more power pills to extend their duration. Let the ammo run dry however, and it's back to the pistol we go.
Once all four sections of a forest scenario are complete, it's time to head out to tackle the end-of-section boss. In this first section of the game, the boss is a huge metal bird which swoops down on the player; spawning tiny exploding robots in its wake. These auto-destructable Tinheads can be activated simply by standig within their proximity, and so the player not only has to avoid the boss and leap over its ferocious ice-balls, but also negotiate the waves of exploding shrapnel from those tiny robots too. Collecting the rocket launcher or an ice lazer prior to this section can also make a huge difference to our characters likelyhood of survivability!
Section 2 - The Underground Mines
The second section takes us beyond the Fantasy Forest and down into the Underground Mines. Here we will find a different array of Tinheads, as well as a heap of crystals and collectable goodies. Slippery surfaces become more of a problem, and inertia is always a significant factor within the game. The Mines are also home of several tricky underwater sections, complete with piranha robots, exploding water mines, and several rocket launchers to slow the player down.
Now that the levels have become quite a size, we also find the design of the landscape starts to become far less linear. There may be several routes which a player could take in order to collect all the marbles and find the exit, and aside from the obvious route, there are side passages and hidden places too; which can yield weapons and more of those increasingly crucial lives. Pressure pads can be used to destroy parts of the landscape, or may trigger automatic ladders to get to all those hard to reach places.
Section 2 - The Underground Mine Boss
Beyond the mines lies the heart of Dr. Destiny's underground complex - the Tinhead Factory. As you'd expect, this section is full of robots and traps designed to gun us out of action - and as the levels become even larger, and even less linear, it becomes ever more critical to get the best weapons and to put them to good use. Here, the lava pools of the Mines have been replaced with an equally deadly force - electricity - and Tesla's wonder-juice can be found sparking out of everywhere - especially emanating from a brand new batch of heavily armoured Tinheads.
Keys also play an increasingly important role within the game, and become crucial here in the third section. Several areas are now blocked off by force fields, and a key of the appropriate colour must be found in order to shut the beam down. This often requires back-tracking all over the map just to unlock the next section, and this aspect is raised to a whole new level by the time we get to the fourth and final scenario of the game.
Section 3 - The Tinhead Factory
Dr. Destiny's Castle features a variety of suitably shielded knight-like robots, a rake of ever-respawning bats, several mysteriously disappearing magicians, and even a few brown rats! - and uses all the tricks in the book to slow the player up. On one level we need to find a whole stack of keys before we can make any progress. On another level, we negotiate a series of swinging platforms over spiky pits of death, and then a bonus level appears to restore our supply of lives before we get to face the final boss (i.e. Dr. Destiny) as he escapes in a helicopter. These final sections are understandably some of the most tricky in the game, and the spiky level in particular is a nightmare of the highest order, requiring a level of patience unknown to most platform games before or since.
Section 4 - Dr. Destiny's Castle
The Whole Nine Yards
As can be seen from the screen shots, the 32 colour extra half-bright mode (64 colours in effect) is excellent in Ruff n' Tumble, helping the polished and professional graphics to stand up to virtual AGA standards - even on a bog standard Amiga 500! Robin Levy’s experience on System 3's Putty has obviously been put to good use, and this really stands the game up against 1994's graphically superior but less successful contender Kid Chaos.
The sounds of Ruff n' Tumble pack an equally large punch - from the industrial metal-flavoured music tracks to the superb array of high quality in-game sound effects. The music and the SFX combine to enhance the game, not detract from it, so although the Tinheads are silent except for the 'Clang!' of metal against metal as they get hit, it means the SFX never take away from the important elements of the action on screen.
Section 4 - Dr. Destiny's Castle
Although the basic premise is to run around and shoot everything as fast as possible, this doesn't mean the game is overawed by frantic action. On the contrary, the levels are often a mixture of slowly taking care of the smaller robots and conserving those vital health hearts, before rushing to clear the larger robots as soon as a good weapon is picked up (and before it runs out!). In most cases, once a robot dies it stays dead - which is always a good thing! - and even the robots which re-spawn from generator pads can be stopped after killing a few - resulting in the levels becoming much quieter and much easier to navigate around. Several waypoints are also used to make sure progress is not altogether lost after losing a life; so that the player can carry on from somewhere near their previous position. Although the inertia factor may be a little disconcerting to begin with - sometimes leaving players skidding head-long into their enemies - this actually seems to add to the game and makes it feel more 'real' somehow. The speed and ease of Ruffs character control also means that energy and lives are rarely taken away unfairly. In fact, all the platforms and power-ups are placed in logical places, extra lives (or 100 gold coins) keep the player supplied as necessary, and the usually annoying 'leaps of faith' are incredibly rare.
On the downside there are a few issues with the game. The first is the fact that the player can only fire a weapon at 45 degree angles, while most of the landscape runs to it's own agenda - meaning the player cannot shoot up or down hills very easily. Secondly, running out of ammo in a tight spot usually ends up with a quick death; as there is often too much action going on to leave room for mistakes. The character is also notable for his inability to jump onto enemies to kill them. Bugs may be rare, but the biggest appears during one of the Factory levels - where falling down the wrong hole results in the player landing on a moving platform they simply cannot get off. Lastly, the final encounter with Dr. Destiny himself is surprisingly easy if the player manages to get past the helicopter to shoot from behind, which is an anti-climax. However, these few concerns never detract from the game experience, enabling Ruff n' Tumble to shine out ahead of it's rivals. A solid, if very tricky platform game for all ages, and one which many platform freaks will love from the start.
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Ruff n' Tumble's graphics are amazing considering the technical limitations of the OCS chipset, and time has obviously been taken to get a great level of detail into the game. The sprites are large and well drawn, and certainly on par with its rivals: Super Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog.
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A great selection of in-game tunes and spot effects help to give the game a sense of power and urgency. The acid house inspired music over the first few levels is particularly memorable. The SFX are of a high quality; and although there could have been more of them (re-loading the gun, enemy fire) they match the action without becoming distracting.
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Exploring the levels is made easier with the absence of a time limit. The platforms and weapons all seem to be in the right places, and the learning curve feels exactly right from the start. The action is often fast and furious; combining physical and mental dexterity; and makes The Great Giana Sisters look rather prehistoric. However, the game will take a good long time to complete in one sitting, and several Savestates were used in the process of this review.
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| Ruff n' Tumble is a game many players come back to again and again, not only for the graphics but for the sheer thrill of the fast paced action. Once the levels have been mapped in the players mind, it becomes much easier to see which weapons are used where, and how to progress with the minimum health damage and the maximum firepower. A solid winner! |
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