Marsupilami

Marsupilami (1995) brings André Franquin's yellow, black-spotted jungle creature with the impossibly long tail to the Mega Drive/Genesis under Sega's own label. Unlike most licensed platformers of the day it is not a straight action game — half of it is a puzzle game in disguise.

The setup fits the comics: a trapper named Bring M. Backalive has hauled Marsupilami and his elephant friends off to a circus in Europe. They escape, and every level asks one thing of you — shepherd an elephant safely to the exit. The elephant is willing but helpless: he plods wherever you nudge him, and everything standing in his path is your problem to solve.

Your tool for solving it is the famous tail. It works as a spring, a whip and a crane: you bounce up to ledges, stun enemies, shove crates into position and trip mechanisms so that a multi-ton companion can cross terrain built for an acrobat. The whole game is essentially thinking for two.

The presentation is lovely — big, fluidly animated sprites and plenty of funny little touches if you let the hero idle. Critics at the time were lukewarm, and the escort premise genuinely can frustrate: one mistimed nudge sends the elephant into trouble and the level starts over, and the pace is noticeably slower than a typical platformer. Yet that same mix of hopping and level-sized logic puzzles is exactly what makes Marsupilami stand out from the licensed crowd.

If you prefer thinking to reflexes, it is worth an afternoon. It plays on oldgame.cz right in your browser, with nothing to download or install.