Games of the Abstract: Bug Too! (1996)

 

Developer: Realtime Associates/SegaSoft

Publisher: Sega

One or Two Player

Originally for: Sega Saturn

 

Bug Too is a game I had always wanted to play, seeing a video demo on a Sega Flash Vol. Three disc, the demo discs which briefly existed for the British Official Sega Saturn magazine where this was just one of the videos, not one of the playable demos. Sadly, I did not get many of them, despite there being only seven demo discs¹. All those games, notwithstanding another demo disc I had, filtered into my adolescent brain games I have had an obsession to play even if sadly many are the more expensive titles for the Saturn for the original physical versions in Europe - Mr. Bones (1996), Enemy Zero (1996), Die Hard Arcade (1996) - a sacred list of titles I wished to play. As much as it comes with delight to finally play Bug Too!, as a title among that list, sadly I have to also mention that for a game which had plenty to love, you need to be patient with some cardinal sins of the platformer genre which did make it as agonising as a game I finally got to play and enjoy.

The original Bug (1995) is synonymous to the Saturn in the West as one of the first games ever released for the console, when released in the United States in May 11th 1995 and Europe on July 8th 1995, alongside the original Panzer Dragoon (1995) and Clockwork Knight (1994) as one of its most prominent titles which people may know of. Developed by Realtime Associates, who cut their teeth from 1986 into the sixteen bit era of games, the prequel was confirmed as being originally an official Sonic the Hedgehog project, as a jump into 3D, before it got kyboshed by Sega of Japan². So instead, alongside the messy history of Sonic the Hedgehog never getting a proper entry in the main franchise for that console, we got the titular Bug instead, an insect humanoid actor who, in the first game, is acting in a film we play as a game, rescuing his family from a Queen spider. Bug was a hard game, something to consider with this sequel, as alongside not having a save system in the conventional sense, my childhood memories vividly remember how its long sprawling levels, just in the first world, full of hazards and enemies meant I never got off that world unless I used a cheat code for level skipping. Even if both are technically 2D.5 platformers, with restricted routes to travel or move, that game and its sequel are games whose challenge or attempts to bring platforming to a polygonal world, with all the hiccups especially for Bug Too alongside its virtues.

Bug Too has as loose a plot as you could get, with just the context that with two new characters to choose from - our titular lead, who would get a "Best Buns" award for how much he twerks his posterior when allowed to get away with it, a lovable dog-maggot hybrid named Maggot, and one of a few questionable archetypes in this game, a Blaxploitation Disco-Stu bug humanoid named Superfly. They have been told by a film executive, rushing them over the worlds in his limo, to churn out films in a variety of genres which are our worlds, each with the level select now done by moving around a stage to access them in any route, which is distinct to say the least for this time. The first game was a an early era attempt at polygonal platforming if sticking in a 2D.5 form, that you worked on a restricted pathway even if the world is in three dimensional graphics. That meant restricting the paths ahead for you and, in mind to its pre-Sonic plan, having you wonder to and fro the screen, into the background and even upside down on sprawling surreal dream worlds of insects living on floating platforms. Bug Too is not different but does factor in a quirk which effects the gameplay as you have more freedom of movement; you still have limited paths, but alongside mazes to find all the bonuses, you have to factor in what place within a platform you are now stood on, even having to jump forwards towards the screen in multiple and dangerous platforming moments.

I have to credit Bug Too for personality. If you want pure surreal game world logic, this has this from the get-go with the horror themed world, Weevil Dead 2, of floating platforms with falling hedgerows, zombie weevils and ghosts. The Egyptian theme levels for world two, Lawrence of Arachnia, are kind of obvious, as is Antennae Day 4 for the sci-fi ones, but we get to a deeply dream-like circus world Flee Wee's Big Adventure, and for the requisite underwater section of a platformer, Swatterworld, which is, yes, a pin on Kevin Coaster's notorious film Waterworld (1995), but leads to background depicting islands of crystal and weird denizens like literal hammerhead sharks and accused sea monkeys.

Flee Wee's Big Adventure and the last world Cicada Night Fever deserve their own paragraphs alongside praise of the aesthetics of the game in general, as sadly I am going to have to be brutal about issues with the game which do undercut the game after Weevil Dead 2 world up to Swatterworld. The first is an uncomfortable amount that has aged badly. The sight of snakes dressed and sounding like stereotypical Middle Eastern terrorists with guns and rocket launchers, having wandered out of True Lies (1994) with Arnold Schwarzenegger, in the Egyptian levels are a reminder of how many stereotypes were found in not just videogames, but pop culture from this era, and you can add others like the "fey" martial arts mummy, one of two from this world's bosses, that have not aged well. The two levels I singled out will get their praises, but the wackiness that has been introduced with voiced enemies within the middle of the game only managed to be once and a while; Antennae Day has a gleefully subversive choice to have planet/octopus aliens floating in space who look like the Sega Saturn symbol and shout "Sega!" in the trademark of their advertisements.

The other issue with Bug Too is that, for all the levels for their hardness that are still fun, there is much that is unforgivable. You will get fun levels in this game throughout, but alongside the fact the game seems to have struggled in development, due to the fact you have up to five levels for Lawrence of Arachnia but only two and a boss by the last levels of the entire game, suggesting material had to be scrapped, there is a lot of excruciating examples of platforming you need to get through. Among them are two levels which deserve gaming hell for their sins. Part of this is one of the design changes from the previous game, which comes into play in the choice that this is still a 2D.5 platformer, but you can move above in certain spaces and platforms so you can move about on them, allowing for a greater semblance of freedom in movement even on limited spaced platforms. It just becomes an unnecessary niggle to complicate more precarious platforming, especially as you will have some insanely difficult platforming including jumping in and out of the screen, which unfortunately leads also to some leaps of faith to platforms off-screen. There are also platforms, despite barriers on them to restrict falling off them, where you can accidentally overshoot and jump even past their invisible walls to oblivion if you cannot exploit them. The decision to also turn levels into more overt mazes to find all the collectable gems, extra lives and bonus levels leads to levels which cannot be defended. Antennae Day Stage 1 is dreadful, for this maze-like structure where you can find yourself lost and returning to the beginning; the actual goal is found on a lengthy passage of invisible platforms over nothing, and only seen when stepped on or, with the spitting power up as a projectile, using the later to find the gaps rather than just used on enemies. Swatterworld Stage 1 is just as confusing as a maze above and underwater involving back tracking over elevators and spinning platforms, with more awkward platforming in three dimensional spaces to climb onto them, to find switches, even preventing you from using one elevator to the final steps until you have wandered off and returned back.

This is such a shame as there is delirious and proudly surreal fun here too, these platformers feeding the mind of my younger self with moments even if hard and imperfect mechanics that fed my imagination. This is something I can defend in spite of the middle worlds being some of the most awkward I have come across, even making the difficulty curves of Konami's Castlevania games more appreciated with them giving you some fairness to their restrictions. The composer Greg Turner is a huge virtue here for starters in terms of good parts of the game, having worked on the original Bug of before. Whether it is the haunted house funk of the Weevil Dead to the clown music of Flee Wee's Big Adventure, he got the memo even for the level select stage music to stand out. The aesthetic style in general to Bug Too is one of its strongest points alongside moments of bizarre humour which do work, such as a random alien drinking coffee who is an inadvertent obstacle when dealing with the Antennae Day boss, wandering the walkways between spikes and the actual boss trying to blast you. You have, in a 2D.5 world when not meddled with, such wonderfully out there aspects with the platforming like a giant spiral which pulls you into the screen, or all the upside down and on the side platforms where even reversing the controls feels less cruel but apt for these parts. Even when not perfect, when this game emphasises mechanics of the past, like the fondly missed mushrooms you bounced off from the prequel, of the level specific ones, like riding giant gun welding enemies to shoot the others in proto-cover based shooting, you do see the game at its best before you get to the two worlds I loved the most.

Flee Wee's Big Adventure is a surreal circus, with tiny clown cars with a full size clown inside them to worry about, lion bugs, dangerous bouncing balls, and a joke which would have went over children’s heads, a one moment scene involving voluptuous Medusa women in cages whose kisses cause damage but also reverse your controls, requiring you to take a literal cold shower midway through the section if you wish to get rid of this effect. Cicada Night Fever is just mad, and in the best of ways, as whilst the end boss is made harder by the bad choice of some freedom in space, the game actually ends on a high note with two fun and idiosyncratic levels with a challenging end boss. Between the Cheshire cats, returning frogs from the first game with fly squatter tongues, and one joke involving a Beatles Yellow Submarine tribute, with Liverpudlian accents, which did make me chuckle, and this shows how imaginative and good Bug Too can be. You just look at the backgrounds – including the giant drinking birds toys in the distance among multiple giant toadstools the size of mountains – to see how deliciously bizarre platformers could be in the best of ways in this last world. The final boss, an Alice in Wonderland tribute with a giant smoking caterpillar, even has you also avoiding giant pieces of popcorn falling from the sky alongside the caterpillar's smoke rings just because.

It is a shame that the game has some unforgivable moments I have to bring up, as alongside not having a proper save function like the original game, there are a long of mechanics and questionable choices which you will struggle with that undercut the great moments. It's now dated style is also chic in its unrealistic take on platforming, wandering upwards and upside down, and does also show the Saturn’s curious polygonal graphics, whilst a pig for some to develop with, could conjure imaginative visuals like this has. It is a shame that I have to say, however, that the middle of Bug Too could sadly cause some to give up on the game, which is tragic. This was also the last of the franchise too in general. Realtime Associates, who developed both games, briefly continued into the sixth generation of gaming consoles, but moved away in favour of "serious games" which use gaming mechanics for added benefits. I cannot help but praise them, for one primary example of this, for Re-Mission (2006) and its 2013 sequel, a game specifically designed for young cancer patients with HopeLab Foundation to use third person shooting game mechanics to help guide them through how their cancer treatments worked as well as the emotional benefits of playing such a game in general. Segasoft, who were brought in for Bug Too, sadly was taken away from gaming publication and development in 2000 with layoffs, changed as an arm of Sega in North America to focus on the Heat.net online gaming service at the time³. This is a shame as they were the ones we have to thank for publishing some really idiosyncratic Saturn games like Three Dirty Dwarves (1996). Bug found himself, after the end credits here where he talks directly to us of how multi faceted an actor he is, lost in the attic of time alongside Clockwork Knight’s Pepperouchau and characters from other games from this era, with the exception of the protagonist of Nights Into Dreams (1996) confided into oblivion. The Sega Saturn, with its odd history of being a console more popular in Japan, and absolutely forgetting to release a canonical Sonic the Hedgehog entry, decided in general to ignore most of the intellectual properties from the Mega Drive/Genesis in general, with characters from this time seen as misfits lost to time, many of which were sadly penalised like this to be abandoned.  

=========

1) Sadly I did not get all thirty seven magazines, nor kept the ones I had, so I also missed out on the first disc of Panzer Dragoon Saga (1998), the Christmas NiGHTS into Dreams (1996) disc nor another for Swagman (1997).

2) Bug! (Revisited) | Reviewing Every U.S. Saturn Game, Episode 7 of 246 of the YouTube series PandaMonium Reviews Every U.S. Saturn Game. Released on May 20th 2023, it includes an archive interview with David Warhol, founder of Realtime Associates, where this information is revealed.

3) SegaSoft Shake-Up, written by Curt Feldman and published for Gamespot.com on April 28th 2000.