Fury of the Furries – A review by John “Boatofcar” Shawler

This review originally appeared in Issue 1 of Amiga Addict Magazine. To purchase Amiga Addict, visit their official online store at simulant.uk.

 

Fury of the Furries is a solid Amiga title that incorporates the best aspects of Lemmings, BC Kid, and Bionic Commando into one of the better games in the puzzle platform genre. The Furries themselves, inexplicably known as Tinies, have recently returned to their home planet, which has been turned into a wasteland by an evil Tiny known as The Wicked One. 

The player’s job is to guide their own Tiny through eight separate stages of ten levels apiece. Your Tiny is endowed with four abilities, each of which turns it into a different color. When you’re yellow, you can emit fireballs. When red, you develop a taste for terra firma and can eat through the scenery. When green, vines shoot forth from your body and attach to walls and ceilings, allowing you to swing like the king of the jungle. Dive into the water when you’re blue, and instead of dying a quick death, you’ll glide through the water with ease. 

Unlike many Amiga platformers, there are concurrent music and sound effects in Fury of the Furries, and the jazzy themes fit the game quite well. Each stage has plenty of variety–your Tiny visits deserts, lagoons, pyramids, and a factory over the course of its adventure. The controls are nice and tight, and the difficulty curve is set perfectly. The Tinies themselves are fun to watch as well. Each used ability is accompanied by amusing animations, particularly that of the red Tiny. 

As with the best puzzle platformers on the Amiga, this received a console release, sans the Tinies themselves. Namco relicensed the game starring their famous dot muncher, and it is known on the Mega Drive as Pac-In-Time.. For players who like the idea of choosing between abilities to overcome obstacles as in Lemmings, but want direct character control, Fury of the Furries is an excellent game to spend the afternoon with. 

 

Graphics 90%

Graphics are very good, only hampered by the lack of backgrounds.

 

Sound 95%

Top notch soundtrack, though more sound effects would have edged it to perfection.

 

Grab Factor 95%

Almost perfect difficulty curve.

 

Playability 97%

Switching between modes is made more complicated than it should be due to the one button stick. Adding two buttons support would have been appreciated, but that’s a common fault in Amiga games that I can’t dock this one too much for.