SPISPOPD

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

SPISPOPD (or Smashing Pumpkins into Small Piles of Putrid Debris) is an Action Adventure Puzzle Game series developed and published by indie developer Hamumu Software that started in 1993 with the game of the same name.

The first game of the series, SPISPOPD, was made in 1993 in response to an old Doom joke revolving around how that game's title caused so much anticipation. SPISPOPD followed the story of Bouapha the Gourdslayer as he travelled around Pumpkinia to retrieve stolen candles and smash the pumpkins responsible for stealing them.

A direct sequel to SPIPSPOPD, SPISPOPD II: Dr. Lunatic, was released in 1998, and was the first game in the series played from a 3/4 2½D perspective. Bouapha reprises his role as the player character, but this time, he has to deal with the game's eponymous character: a Mad Scientist who plans to take over the world by creating a Zombie Apocalypse. Bouapha must Walk the Earth and defeat Dr. Lunatic's poker buddies to obtain the four Keys of Lunacy that will allow him to open the front door of Dr. Lunatic's stronghold. Two expansion packs were released for Dr. Lunatic, the Expando-Pak and Fun Pack, which primarily added more levels and monsters to the original game. Dr. Lunatic and its expansion packs were re-released in 2011 as a single game, featuring slightly optimised code that improved the game's compatibility with the most modern operating systems.

In 2003, a complete overhaul of Dr. Lunatic, titled Dr. Lunatic Supreme With Cheese, was released. Supreme radically altered the user interface of Dr. Lunatic, with its primary claims to fame being the over-1000 levels a standard install of it has, a ton of Unlockable Content and an extremely easy to use World Editor that allows players to create their own levels (once they have unlocked it).

The SPISPOPD series has played an important role in Hamumu Software culture. Dr. Lunatic's art style and game mechanics, in particular, influenced the look and feel of every Hamumu Software game released until Costume Party and, to a large extent, defined Hamumu Software as the company that it was until the game's programming code was retired in 2008.

SPISPOPD smashes the following tropes into small piles of putrid debris:
  • 2½D: Dr. Lunatic and Supreme. The monsters, characters and projectiles are full 3D models, but the floor textures and walls are made of 2D sprites, the game is played from a fixed overhead view, and Bouapha can only be controlled in the compass directions (although he can be bounced into the air if the correct tile parameters are set).
  • Three Quarters View: Dr. Lunatic and Supreme.
  • The All-Seeing AI: Averted only in Supreme on Stealth levels; they cannot see any enemy standing on tiles with a light setting below a specific value.
  • Bland-Name Product: AK-8087, Richie Lich and Zomboni, among other less notable examples.
  • Broken Bridge: Most worlds in Dr. Lunatic and Supreme have levels that are blocked off until the player completes a certain number of the levels that are accessible from the start, and in the case of the Crazy Asylum of Madness, four Keys of Lunacy (acquired by completing four other worlds) are needed in order to access most of the levels in it.
  • Car Fu: Using your You-Go to run over various monsters Grand Theft Auto style in Supreme.
  • Cognizant Limbs: One of the most common traits among boss monsters. Variations include Combat Tentacles, giant claws and turrets.
  • Cosmetic Award: Gallery Goals in Supreme. The full version has 100 of them.
  • Death Cry Echo: The player character, of course, but many of the other monsters give off a unique sound when they are defeated. Boss monsters just explode a lot.
  • Death Ray: The Death Beam in Dr. Lunatic and Supreme, which is used primarily by Richie Lich and Matilda. It is so strong, it can annihilate the player twice over with one shot.
  • Denser and Wackier / Lighter and Softer: The first game in the series was the bloodiest and goriest. Later games softened things up to make the series more kid-friendly (such as the removal of blood and an Art Evolution to Garfield-inspired graphics), with Supreme being the least bloody, least gory, densest and wackiest game in the entire series.
  • Do Not Run with a Gun: SPISPOPD averts this. In Dr. Lunatic, Bouapha cannot move and fire at the same time (he stops moving whenever he throws a hammer or fires his secondary weapon) and in Supreme, this is the default setting, which can be disabled when firing the character's primary weapon once you unlock the Move'n'Shoot ability.
  • Dropped a Roly-Poly on Him: "Telefragging" in Supreme, which is done by having a monster teleport to the same location as another monster, instantly killing the latter.
  • Easy Mode Mockery / Hard Mode Perks: In Supreme, your final score in a level is reduced or increased by 25% if you complete a level on Normal or Lunatic difficulty respectively.
  • Escort Mission: In Supreme, any level with Buddy Bunnies is usually one of these. One kind of Buddy Bunny follows a predetermined path, while the other will follow Bouapha around.
  • Every Car Is a Pinto: Autozoids and Traffic. Both have a quite deadly explosion sequence when they are defeated.
  • Everything Fades: Anything that is defeated disappears into nothing. Unless if it was telefragged.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: SPISPOPD is one of the things you will do most of the time in SPISPOPD.
  • Excited World Title!: Spooky Forest! in Dr. Lunatic and Supreme.
  • Five-Bad Band: In Dr. Lunatic, the following are also the game's bosses.
  • Flash of Pain: Every monster and the player in Dr. Lunatic and Supreme turns red briefly when they take damage.
  • Flunky Boss: Probably the most common trait among all boss monsters. Most can summon mooks to help them.
  • Game Within a Game: The SpisMall in Supreme has a couple of arcade game machines that the player can spend coins to play with.
  • Gotta Catch Them All: The four SPISPOPD keychains in Dr. Lunatic and Supreme. Finding them is a requirement to obtain One Hundred Percent Completion for all worlds.
  • Gravity Barrier: "Crazy Asylum of Madness" in Dr. Lunatic and Supreme has this.
  • Harder Than Hard: Supreme. When cranked up to Lunatic difficulty, that is.
  • Harmless Freezing: Being frozen in Dr. Lunatic and Supreme does no damage and only stops the affected monster from moving for a few seconds.
  • Hub Level: The entire series' level structure. The original release of SPISPOPD featured a "hub world" where the player could choose which series of levels to play, and both Dr. Lunatic and Supreme start the player off on a "hub level" in any world, where they can enter other levels through doors/houses/openings/hollow trees/etc. Taking this to a T is that starting the player off on a hub level when they first enter a world is a requirement for any player-made world to be hosted on Hamumu's website.
  • Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Supreme's easy difficulty level is Normal, whereas its actual normal difficulty level is called "Hard". Its hard difficulty is called "Lunatic".
  • Improvised Weapon: The Mines and Jetpack in Supreme can double up as a rear-facing stationary bomb layer and Toaster respectively. You can probably see where this is going.
  • Killer Rabbit: Doom Bunny in Dr. Lunatic and Supreme. Whatever you do, do not hit one with a weapon.
  • Kill It with Fire: Prominent examples include the Toaster, as well as Magmazoids and Scary Scarab.
  • Lethal Lava Land: Any cavern themed world/level is guaranteed to be this.
  • Level Editor: The World Editor in Dr. Lunatic and Supreme; the one in the latter is Unlockable Content.
  • Level Goal: Collecting all the candles on a level in SPISPOPD and touching a specific tile; collecting all the brains on a level and touching a specific tile in Dr. Lunatic and Supreme.
  • Limit Break: The Rage attacks in Dr. Lunatic and Supreme, which require filling up the Rage meter to maximum in order to be activated. Depends mainly on the character being used and can be altered if a secondary weapon is equipped.
  • Metal Slime: Mad Millennium Bug in Supreme.
  • Macross Missile Massacre: The Death Turret in Supreme. Anything that gets within half a screen's range to just one of these are unlikely to survive the barrage of missiles it unloads relentlessly. The Missile Pack's Rage attack also qualifies, and the player can do this with a Missile Pack just by holding down the secondary fire button.
  • Mad Scientist: Dr. Lunatic, the eponymous character of Dr. Lunatic and Supreme.
  • Made of Explodium: The Boomkin is the living embodiment of this trope. It has 1 HP, and when it sees the player, it will relentlessly charge them and attempt a Taking You with Me collision. If it is defeated by getting hit from weapons fire, it will still explode and damage the player if they are too close to it.
  • Making a Splash: Sneaky Shark and Wet Willy.
  • Mirror Match: Evil Clone is this to Bouapha in Supreme, albeit with a different-coloured shirt.
  • More Dakka: The AK-8087 in Dr. Lunatic and Supreme. 99 rounds of energy slugs that do one HP damage each, completely expended after holding down the secondary fire button for about five seconds. Have fun.
  • Muzzle Flashlight: Weapons fire from the Toaster or Missile Pack in Dr. Lunatic and Supreme will illuminate the tiles around the fired projectiles. Probably something that should not be done on Stealth levels in Supreme.
  • Mythology Gag: The very presence of pumpkins as monsters, usually in secret levels, in Dr. Lunatic and Supreme, as well as candle collection being a secondary objective in the latter. In addition, one of the SPISPOPD keychains is a rocket, Bouapha's form of transport to the next level in the first game.
  • Never Say "Die": The final world in SPISPOPD, H***. In addition, whenever the player's health reaches 0 in Supreme, the Record Book adds it to the number of "Defeats" for that profile.
  • Nintendo Hard: SPISPOPD and Dr. Lunatic. Supreme averts this somewhat with difficulty levels, although given that players are free to create worlds with Fake Difficulty, this is subjective.
  • No Plot, No Problem: Supreme. The story is still there, but defeating the Five-Bad Band is now an optional extra.
  • One Bullet At a Time: Played with in SPISPOPD, in that the number of hammers the player character can have on the screen is determined by how many Hammer Up! powerups they have collected so far. Averted in Dr. Lunatic and Supreme.
  • One-Hit-Point Wonder: Ludicrous Mode in Supreme, which causes the player character to die from any hit, even from an Eensy Weensy's Scratch Damage.
  • One-Hit Polykill: The Toaster in Dr. Lunatic and Supreme. When the secondary fire button is held down, it releases a stream of napalm that will burn through every enemy within its short range. Coupling it with an Ammo Crate in Supreme makes it one of the most dangerous short-ranged weapons the player can get in the games.
  • Outside the Box Tactic: The Dark Vampire in Dr. Lunatic and Supreme can only be damaged if you coax it onto tiles with a light setting higher than or equal a specific amount or via telefragging. It is otherwise impervious to everything.
  • Psycho Serum: Defeating Dr. Lunatic in the Crazy Asylum of Madness will play a cutscene that shows how he becomes a One-Winged Angel when you defeat him.
  • Purely Aesthetic Gender: Averted hard in Supreme with Lunachick, Dr. Lunatic, Shtupid Shroom and Happy Stick Man.
  • Puzzle Boss: In Dr. Lunatic and Supreme, the challenge in a good number of levels with boss monsters is figuring out where to collect all the firepower needed to defeat them. More often than not, the actual boss fight itself is relatively easy compared to this.
  • Puzzle Game: This is essentially the original aspect of the games, and most of the player-made worlds for Supreme follow it.
  • Rule of Cool: Dr. Lunatic and Supreme live on this trope.
  • Say My Name: KONGOR!! and PUMPKIN! in Dr. Lunatic and Supreme. KONGOR!!, in particular, is very verbal about it.
  • Scratch Damage: The Eensy Weensy only has one attack, which does 1 HP damage.
  • Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: The Mind Control Ray in Supreme. It only has one round of ammunition, but for a full minute or until it dies, an enemy that is hit by it will be invulnerable to the player's attacks and will go to town on other enemies it sees.
  • Shout-Out: Several, to Doom:
    • The title, which originated in online discussions prior to the release of Doom in which people jokingly discussed what the next big game would be.
    • The first game's final boss, the Spider Pumpkin, is pretty obviously based on Doom's Spider Mastermind.
    • The ending sequence of earlier versions of the game (later versions just made a generic "You Win!" screen after each world) had Bouapha returning to Earth only to find that the pumpkins had already invaded, just like Doom's ending.
  • Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Icy Mountain in Dr. Lunatic and Supreme, but especially in Supreme, where many levels feature thin or Frictionless Ice.
  • Sphere of Destruction: The Mines' Rage attack in Supreme. An expanding ring chain of explosions from the player makes it one of the most powerful Rage attacks in the game.
  • Stat-O-Vision: The Monster Scanner in Supreme. It even shows Description Porn when a monster is hit by its projectiles the very first time.
  • Status Buff: Acquired through various powerups in Dr. Lunatic and Supreme.
  • Super Drowning Skills: Across the entire series, the player character dies instantly if they touch a water tile...
    • Super Not-Drowning Skills: However, in Supreme, the player character can also survive underwater for about 45 seconds without air and stay underwater indefinitely if they are standing near air bubbles. In addition, if the player runs out of air underwater, they don't die immediately, but their health bar will go down very fast.
  • Take That, Audience!: The defeat message shown to players in SPISPOPD was "You suck". The default defeat message in Dr. Lunatic was changed to "Try again!" but players had an option to switch it back to "You suck". Supreme removed the option and stuck to "Try again!", thus averting this trope completely.
  • The Same but More: Splatter Mode in Supreme, which increases the size and quantity of all particles in the game.
  • Title Scream: SPISPOPD, when it finishes loading.

"Ssssssmashing Pumpkins into Sssmall Piiiles of Puuuutrid Debris!"

  • Turns Red: Matilda in both Dr. Lunatic and Supreme. Her head must be destroyed three times. On the second round, her head's protective hide falls off, allowing her to fire her Death Beam faster; at the same time, her tail projectiles have a slightly increased effective range. On the final round, her skull and mouth is blasted away, rendering her unable to fire her Death Beam, but causing her tail projectiles to have an insane range that makes close-up attacks near-suicidal. In Supreme, Dozer the Dozerian's front grille gets blown off when it is down to half of its maximum health, revealing a gigantic Wave Motion Gun.
  • Unlockable Content: Supreme contains many additional locations and features that are usually unlocked with coins. Even the World Editor is unlockable content!
  • Victory Sphere of Light: Upon collecting all the brains on a level in Dr. Lunatic and Supreme, the player character will yell a Victory Quote and illuminate the area around them.

Bouapha/MechaBouapha: "I'M KOOL KAT BAD!"
Lunachick: "Whoohoo!"
Dr. Lunatic: "Huhuhuhu! Get 'im boys!"
Happy Stick Man: "Happy Stick forever!"
Shtupid Shroom: "YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!"

  • Violation of Common Sense: Some of the Gallery Goals require the player to do this. Drowning with an Energy Barrier active, for instance, or walking unarmed into a crowded animal enclosure to touch a star at the far end.
  • Weapon of Choice: Bouapha and his red hammers, which are efficient for both melee and range combat.
    • Dr. Lunatic: Bolts of electricity which can chain to multiple enemies.
    • Lunachick: Her megaphone, which fires large bursts of red sound energy.
    • MechaBouapha: Same as his non-mechanical counterpart.
    • Shtupid Shroom: Poison mushroom spores, which are the only weapon used by a playable character that can inflict poison.
    • Happy Stick Man: Random projectiles of various types.
  • When All You Have Is a Hammer: For most levels, but there are some very notable aversions, most of them giving the player no hammers to work with for the entire duration of that level. "Flashbacks", for example, gives the player only a limited supply of secondary weapons as a means to combat the monsters on that level.
  • You Have Researched Breathing: The World Editor and Move'n'Shoot ability in Supreme. You need to spend coins to get both.
  • Zero Effort Boss: A villainous example in the form of the eponymous character in Dr. Lunatic and Supreme. He has no attacks, very little life and runs from the player.
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