MAMEmania: The Amazing Adventures of Mr. F. Lea
In this series retro game expert Zac Bentz picks his top ten MAME games. If you’re a casual gaming fanboy MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator and is a software emulator that allows you to play ancient arcade games on modern hardware.
The Amazing Adventures of Mr. F. Lea – Pacific Novelty – 1982
In the rather verbosely titled game The Amazing Adventures of Mr. F. Lea, you take on the humble role of the titular flea. The game itself in incredibly simple and straightforward. Perhaps this is because of the fact that it’s based largely on other games.
The opening selection screen is a bit like that in Tron. You are faced with four possible paths, each one a different game. First, there’s the Frogger clone. In this one you have to get Mr. F. Lea across a lawn filled with “Lawnmower Man” like self-propelled mowers. After that, there is a walkway full of various dogs, some very long, some short, some fast and some slow. All of this plays out exactly like Frogger, and the point is to fill the four houses at the top with Fleas. As you will see in the other stages, this is all very easy, mostly because all of the more lethal elements have been removed. The dogs never disappear, the traffic at the bottom is very regular and there are no crocs to gobble you up.
The next stage is very much like the opening stage in Donkey Kong. An angry dog tosses bones and balls down a descending platform. You have to run and climb up the ladders, avoiding the items. This one is actually a bit tougher then the original Kong, in that the items seem to seek out Mr. F. Lea instead of just staying on one set path, so you can’t follow the same pattern twice.
Next is a stroll up the back of a dog. Well, a dog apparently filled with huge gaping wounds due to some unnamed skin disease, or so it would seem. All you have to do here is stay alive long enough. This is done by jumping over the gaps…and nothing else. There are no other obstacles to overcome here, other than that nagging worry about why there are so many balloons floating around this poor sick animal.
The final stage (well, you can play them in any order, actually) sees you swinging from tail to tail across a few doggy lineups. This one is also incredibly easy, and all you are required to do is push the button at the right time.
What Mr. F. Lea lacks in required skill it makes up for in some pretty awesome music. Well, it is also pretty simple and will be familiar to anyone, but it’s full of some great retro 8-bit sounds, and is actually really loud and nicely fat.
The Amazing Adventures of Mr. F. Lea are anything but amazing. It’s a fun game for about two minutes, which is also just about how long it will take you to get though the first level. This is definitely a case of the title being much more interesting than the actual game. Who are the ad wizards that came up with that?
Zac Bentz is a regular contributor to the Japanese culture blog Japanator, runs his own Japanese music review blog ZB’s A-Z of J-Music and plays crazy electro-rock in The Surfactants. He lives in Duluth, MN with his wife, pets and a closet full of adventure.