Underwurlde - Once Upon A Time...
Once upon a time ( which is the best way all good stories start) , there was a 12 year old girl , she dreamt of magenta mountains and a large cyan wolf. But that was okay, because her trusty friend Sabreman was always at her side . Their adventures in the jungle carried on for years, as we have already told , but there is another story.....a story far from the lush forests and lazy rhinos of Sabrewulf . The story from beyond the jungle......
You have to feel sorry for Sabreman, after battling his way through Sabrewulf to that final cave, in a cruel twist of fate , he finds himself landed into the Underwurlde. The year is 1984 and 'Ultimate ' are not prepared to let Sabreman retire just yet! With a loading screen to die for , another gigantic adventure was about to start.
The first thing that struck me about this game is that the nasty bugs, eagles, jellyfish that fly around in this game don't sap your energy. But don't be fooled, they do something that is far worse, they push you. So, dear reader, you may be wondering why that would cause a problem. Well, picture yourself having spent a good few minutes clambering your way on pieces of furniture to the top of about three screens and then some little , cheerfully coloured jellyfish comes along and ........weeeeeeeeeeee.......splat! You see now ?
Not only that but a lot of the game is spent in underground caverns where you travel by standing on bubbles of volcanic gas. You can imagine just how much of my early game play was spent watching Sabreman fall to his death. Now, there are crystals that can give him immunity if he can snatch one on his majestic fall and a rope that is attached to the cave roof , but wiggle around too much on that one and a large chunk of rock is dislodged and weeeeeeeeeeee........splat!
On the upside at least Sabreman gets a weapon to shoot the little....er.....darlings with.
Not only that but a lot of the game is spent in underground caverns where you travel by standing on bubbles of volcanic gas. You can imagine just how much of my early game play was spent watching Sabreman fall to his death. Now, there are crystals that can give him immunity if he can snatch one on his majestic fall and a rope that is attached to the cave roof , but wiggle around too much on that one and a large chunk of rock is dislodged and weeeeeeeeeeee........splat!
On the upside at least Sabreman gets a weapon to shoot the little....er.....darlings with.
This is a long way from a walk in that lush summer jungle . The goal is to find one of the three exits from the Underwurlde , to do that you need the correct weapon to get past a guardian. Only one weapon works for each guardian , this is not an easy game. Where as Sabrewulf was forever summer , this game , for me anyway, is a game for winter. It's a game for firelight and hearing the wind and rain pound on the windows. So, being as the game is fiendishly difficult, frustrating and I never finished it without using a poke why is it here?
Is it the lure of my little explorer buddy? I suppose that is part of it, it was an extension to Sabrewulf and I felt obliged to try and finish the story, to almost gain closure for the jungle experience and for the months I had spent trying to finish that game. Being able to boast that I had finished Sabrewulf and then suddenly realising I had only finished part one, I felt compelled to do more. But there is more than that....
As a child I had been bullied through out my school career , whether it was for a speech impediment , lack of coordination or my ability to turn bright red and become tongue tied with shyness if anyone so much as looked at me I will never know. But to see Sabreman , going through what I went through at school, to see him getting pushed around and knocked over struck a chord. In fact I often wondered if this game had been written with these sort of experiences in mind. Where as Sabrewulf had been an escape from reality into a fantasy world , Underwurlde in my mind was like a fantasy representation of a school day. So to come back to the original question, why would I want to revisit something that reminded me of this?
I think the phrase is, to rise above. What made the game for me were the bubbles, to escape those who are pursuing and pushing you, by rising above. (Bubbles, good in a drink, good in a bath and a great way to travel!) . This game although dark and frustrating was also uplifting , I know that sounds a contradiction, but somehow 'Ultimate' managed it. I returned again and again , eventually resorting to a poke to gain infinite lives ( and with the aid of a map from Crash magazine ) I did eventually escape from the Underwurlde. But as there are three exits, there was still reason to revisit, each game Sabreman was pushed and knocked , but always rising above, floating free on the bubbles.
As the years have passed I still return to this game, Sabreman and I still jump on the furniture before plunging into the caverns and riding on the bubbles. It's a game that still frustrates me but yet still draws me in.
Once upon a time , there was a 12 year old girl, she dreamt of darker places and bullies . But that was okay , her trusty friend Sabreman had one more lesson to teach her, to rise above.
Once upon a time , there was a 12 year old girl, she dreamt of darker places and bullies . But that was okay , her trusty friend Sabreman had one more lesson to teach her, to rise above.