Fury of the Furries

I know what you're thinking.

Fortunately you're wrong. Fury of the Furries has nothing to do with the more popularly known 'furry' phenomenon of retarded sexual deviants. Thank God. If it did there's no way I'd ever write about it, because I'm not a perverse retard who gets off to pictures of dogcocks.

The Fury of the Furries I'm talking about is a little-known DOS game from my childhood which is now both free and largely forgotten. It's brilliant, quirky and ball-destroyingly difficult in places. Why wouldn't you wanna play it?

You play as the Tinies- a quartet of superpowered furballs whose unique abilities allow you to traverse ingeniously designed levels. There was a yellow Tiny who could launch fireballs (which one could charge for more powerful shots), a green Tiny who could swing around like a spherical Spiderman, a red Tiny who could erode blocks "Minecraft-style" and a blue Tiny who sucked. Together they had to defeat an evil creature known as The Wicked One.

What a great name for a villain.

It was, for the most part, pretty standard platforming fare. You got from A to B while collecting coins and dodging enemies, which was nothing new at all- and because of this it's pretty understandable that the game is in no way considered a classic by anyone of note. Nothing really set it apart from anything else available at the time, and what it did was done better on consoles by icons like Mario and Sonic. That said, it was the execution of Fury of the Furries which made it so special.

It was the first game to include openly parodic level design, often mimicking more popular games' stages to humorous effect- Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Cool Spot and one of the slew of Indiana Jones games appeared in the game, and the Tinies themselves appeared in cutscenes which were both beautifully drawn and legitimately funny. Your character also felt fragile and bouncy, which was quite unusual at a time when platformers were usually fairly stodgy affairs.

Shame the game looked like a pile of ass:

The game isn't exactly visually astonishing, particularly when you consider that Kallisto released it in 1993, which also saw the release of Doom, a game whichstill holds up graphically. The fact is that it looks dated and has aged badly- which may be why it now resides in the graveyard of failed games that is abandonware.

Got an evening free? Of course you do. Bored of killstreaks? Of course you are. Why not download Fury of the Furries and just… I dunno, try it out. It's a few hours long and doesn't take much to slog through, but you'll be able to say you've played an unknown classic and snort at people who've never heard of it.

Take the link, you beautiful hipster: LINK.

Oh, and you need DosBox to run it. If you don't have it already, shame on you, but here's another link: www.dosbox.com

Toby Ellis