1983 · Platformer

Bugaboo (The Flea)

Help Bugaboo (The Flea) escape a cavern while avoiding a large dragon.

Released: 1983
Platforms: Amstrad CPC Commodore 64 Commodore C64/128/MAX MSX ZX Spectrum
Genres: Platformer
Developers: —
Publishers: Quicksilva
Modes: Single-player
Perspective: Side view
Themes: Action
Languages: English

About

Bugaboo (The Flea), later published in Spain as La Pulga, is a video game written by the Spanish programming duo Paco Portalo and Paco Suarez for the ZX Spectrum and published by Quicksilva in 1983. It was later released for the Commodore 64, MSX and Amstrad CPC. The Amstrad CPC port was published under the name Roland in the Caves using the Roland character.

Bugaboo, besides being one of the earliest video games made in Spain, is one of the first computer games to include cutscenes. Its publication marked the beginning of the Golden Era of Spanish Software. A sequel was released in Spain by Opera Soft under the title Poogaboo, made by Paco Suarez. Paco Portalo, the other member of Paco & Paco, left the project after the publication of the original game for the ZX Spectrum.

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

The game begins with an animation depicting Bugaboo, a small, yellow creature with two extremely long legs, jumping around on a colourful planet before accidentally falling through a crack in the planet's surface and falling to the bottom of a cavern.

The player must control Bugaboo and guide him back to the top of the cavern, and out to the safety of the planet's surface.

Reception

Reviews were overwhelmingly positive, with CRASH giving the game 92%, Computer and Video Games awarding it 8/10 and their Game of the Month and Personal Computer Games giving it 7/10.

CRASH said that Bugaboo is a "high quality" arcade game, and "highly addictive", while Personal Computer Games said that the game is appropriate for the players who like a challenge. Computer and Video Games praised the game's "breath-taking" graphics and "perfect" animation and said that a fresh and original approach to game design have been combined to produce another "top rate" game. Tony Hetherington of Computer Gamer magazine included the game in "The Spectrum Collection" - "15 classic games that all Spectrum owners should have".

Legacy

Bugaboo (The Flea) was one of the first home computer games to contain a cutscene. It was also one of the first games to measure the player's time to completion.

The game's popularity spawned the creation of a book in 2009 entitled Bugaboo, un hito en la Historia del software español by Francisco Portalo Calero (i.e., Paco Portalo, one of the original authors of the game) and published by Universidad de Extremadura, which is available online.