Who needs a pill to become
invisible?
– an article by Pooka
So
I’m sitting in my room at University. It’s Sunday afternoon (being a student I
didn’t get up until
My
computer is switched on anyway, so I decide to go on the internet and randomly
browse around. This is, of course, a mistake. I’ve got limited internet access
in my room but it’s costing me a penny a minute and as soon as my £10 is up I
need to go and fork out more money. I’m checking my emails
quickly and chatting to a couple of old friends (MSN helpfully shutting itself
down every two minutes or so), when somehow I end up at sfrog.cjb.net.
The
answer to my boredom troubles hits me quickly: Superfrog. Of course. It’s infuriating and difficult, yes, but it’s
addictive and fun to play – just the thing to while away those evening hours.
So I download my “Superfrog Demo for Windows XP” pack and activate it.
It
doesn’t work, of course. I neglected to take into account the fact that my PC
doesn’t actually have a built-in floppy disk drive, and boot disks don’t work
with external plug-in drives. So that’s that idea out of the window. I sit for
a minute, racking my brains, and the answer lands on emulation. So I don’t like
it, but it might just do the trick. I re-load Windows XP and drag up WinUAE
from the depths of my hard drive. I load the “Superfrog in a window” config, stick the kick.rom and ADFs in the right places,
and start the emulation.
Once
again, this doesn’t work. The familiar loading screens work fine, and even skip
at the click of one mouse button, but the minute I get to the Superfrog title
screen, I’m stuck. I try pressing CTRL, followed by ALT, neither of which work.
A little less confidently, I click the mouse again – nothing. Eventually I’m
left to press every key I can. I try every input config
that comes with WinUAE, including compatibility mode. I also try every key on
the keyboard – I even whack Shift five times, but that just turns on
StickyKeys. Hmmm. And after ten minutes of frustrating
re-configuration, I’m still foolishly sitting in front of a laptop, while a
frog and potato blink at me from the screen, completely nonplussed.
I’m
on the verge of deciding between bursting into tears and suicide when it hits
me that WinUAE isn’t actually the only emulator capable of running Superfrog.
Hell, if Mortuus47 can manage to get Superfrog emulated in Debian
then surely I should be able to with Windows XP. So it’s back onto the
internet, this time to download a copy of FELLOW.
As
expected, this also doesn’t work. At first, FELLOW, being DOS-based, looks
retro, perhaps giving me the (false) impression that FELLOW and Superfrog are
kindred spirits. In essence, it actually works fine, me having stuck the same
ADFs and kick.rom into the config. It runs quickly –
and I mean quickly. If anyone ever feels the need to see the Superfrog
introductory sequence run through in about 15 seconds then FELLOW is what you
need… but I actually wanted to play the game. And yet again, there was no
getting past the intro screen. According to the config,
all I need to do is press Fire 1. This should correspond to Right-CTRL.
There
isn’t one.
There
isn’t a Right-CTRL.
This
PC has an Intel Pentium 4 processor, 512 MB of DDR RAM and a 30 GB hard disk,
and yet there isn’t a Right-CTRL key.
Interesting.
So
I hit F12 (literally hit, this is beginning to get me down a bit) and try every
config that FELLOW has to offer and… It. Doesn’t. Work. Once again, I’m forced to sit there and watch Spud
blinking at me, and he’s beginning to look rather stupid by this point.
Back
onto the internet, this time aiming to find any other emulator that I can – and
then yet another thought strikes me – WinFellow. The
most simplistic port-of-the-mainframe Amiga emulator that there is, and yet it
might work. Even idiots like me might be able to get it working. It takes me a
few minutes to actually navigate the WinFellow site
to find a UK-based download server, but eventually I get
98_73_54_x2_winfellow_esther_stickysurfaces_347_toolong.zip (it has a long
name, okay?) onto my hard drive. Erasing all other emulators in a fit of pique,
I extract all the files into a fresh new ‘WinFellow’
folder and, really not getting my hopes up, stick the kick.rom and ADFs into
the config, and hit “Start Emulation” with a
deliberately contemptuous gesture, not expecting much.
Intro
screens boasting “wow, look at us, we know how to crack Amiga games” flash by,
although in a somewhat slower manner than usual. A click of the mouse button
skips them, which is a promising sign, followed by the Accessing Disk sign. Of
course, the game takes so long to ‘access disk’ that I could go to make a cup
of tea and hope that by the time I get back a couple of bytes of data might
have forced their way through. 512 MB of DDR RAM, my arse! However, there is
something that I wasn’t expecting here – the intro music. This hadn’t played on
either of the other two – it might have had something do with the “disable
sound” thing I’d clicked on both configs. But the
intro music, hardly calming, gives me a slight air of confidence, so I strike
Left-CTRL, fully expecting Superfrog and Spud to blink in their “did something
just happen?” fashion.
But
a miracle occurs.
The
menu actually appears! I’m seriously considering jumping out of my chair and
out of the window – but as I’m on the top floor, maybe that isn’t the best
idea. But it works, and it works like a dream! R is up, F is down, and D and G
are left and right, while Left-CTRL must be action! Whoopee, I’m going to play
Superfrog! And so the game loads, and up come the
…wait
a minute.
No
Superfrog.
If I remember correctly, and I should do, because I
last played this game, what – under a week ago? – that
there is actually a frog in this game. But there isn’t. Well, at least there
isn’t one on the screen. So hopefully I touch G, and the screen moves right. D, and it moves left. R, and the
screen bumps itself up a bit. This is also interesting. So I am, in fact,
playing a frog-less version of Superfrog – well, presumably, there is a frog
there, he just can’t be seen. Right, here goes with Invisible Superfrog – I got
through 1-1 with my eyes closed a couple of weeks back, so this should be no
problem. And it isn’t, really. Using the rough estimate that Mr. Invisible Frog
is in the middle of the screen, I race through 1-1 with very little difficulty.
Hurrah! Yet I’m bored of this level by now – even if he is invisible, this is Superfrog,
and that means a challenge. So I turn on unlimited lives, and skip
straight to 4-1.
This
is where the game gets tricky, never mind the frog being invisible. Thus
commences the trickiest Superfrog experience of my life. I’m using Spud to
determine the frog’s position every few seconds, and relying on blind leaps of
faith to get over those devilish gaps with spikes filling up the bottom. Of
course, some of these work – some don’t. For five minutes I’m stuck jumping
over one single gap, and once I do actually make it, and in my surprise jog a
key which sends Invisible Frog hurtling back into the pit!
The
cold facts are these: I managed to get Frog With A
Mission by completing the first three levels of World 4, completely by accident
discovering all of the secret areas, somebody obviously being on my side since
most of my leaps of faith worked after about ten tries. It’s not hard to judge
where Superfrog is, as he’s mostly in the exact middle of the screen, and the
scrolling helps with that, and the game is still infuriatingly addictive. So
addictive, in fact, that it’s more compelling than the game while he actually
is visible! And three whole hours after I first accessed the internet to get
the means to play a game – any game at all – I’m carefully pressing keys to
guide a completely invisible frog through some ice caverns, while penguins
throw snowballs and Sonic the Hedgehog runs past in the background.
And
if that’s not bizarre, I don’t know what is.