Puggsy

Puggsy was a puzzle/adventure game released in 1993, published by Psygnosis and developed by Traveller's Tales (who later developed the LEGO Adaptation Games). It was released for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, Sega CD and Amiga. The game follows the story of the titular orange space-hopper alien who crashed his ship on The Planet, but the ship was stolen by the native raccoons.

Although the story is made of Excuse Plot at best, Puggsy is notable for using a clever physics engine to control the properties of objects - a feature that would be rarely seen until the success of Half-Life 2.


 * Digital Piracy Is Evil: When you start the level after your first boss fight, the system searches for SRAM (a 27-digit password is used to store all progress). If you're playing on an Genesis emulator that has SRAM constantly enabled, it prevents you from proceeding. Of course, some emulators allow you to disable SRAM.
 * Everything Trying to Kill You: Shellfish, monkeys, starfish, witches, grizzly/mining bears, fish, raccoons... all members of the animal kingdom hate you and want to kill you. Except frogs and cabaret dancers. And that doesn't even consider the non-living things.
 * Hailfire Peaks: Triple-word score. Fire Heart is a Slippy Slidey Ice World set on an active volcano, which you eventually enter.
 * Haunted Castle: Darkskull Castle, haunted by actual ghosts on one level.
 * The Jimmy Hart Version: The theme to "Angeltier Falls" is extremely close to the ET the Extraterrestrial theme.
 * The Lost Woods: Darkblade Forest, home of extremely tenacious witches and flying candles.
 * Minecart Madness: A strange example. In the Diamond Mine levels, minecarts travel back and forth along arbitrary tracks. One is required to solve a puzzle and another helps you reach a secret level, but they mostly just help you get to places quicker. Just watch out for minecart-riding mice.
 * Multiple Endings: Some endings require some abstract thinking, and another requires correctly solving a few complicated equations.
 * Noob Cave: The Beach is definitely this, despite not being a cave. The first level is literally walk right, pick up a shell if you feel like it, jump, jump again, continue walking.
 * One-Hit-Point Wonder: Puggsy, unless he's wearing sneakers and/or shades, or using a shield.
 * Shout Out: To obscure Psygnosis platformer Wiz 'n' Liz in the Secret Level Wabbit's World.
 * And another Secret Level, Puggs In Space