Poogaboo: La Pulga 2 is the rather obscure sequel to the ZX Spectrum classic, Bugaboo (The Flea), aka La Pulga. It was written by the original author of La Pulga (Paco Suárez), and was published by Opera Soft, for PC MS-DOS, the ZX Spectrum, MSX and Amstrad CPC, in 1991.

The reason La Pulga 2 is somewhat obscure is because it was only ever officially released in Spain, and never made to the rest of the world. Which is a pity. And I don’t know why they decided to call it “Poogaboo” either. I can only guess that Poogaboo is a relative of Bugaboo (or Booga-Boo, whichever of the iterations you prefer).

The concept and gameplay in Poogaboo is more or less the same as in Bugaboo: you must jump out of a series of nine caverns and avoid being eaten by anything hostile. The jump meter (that measures your jump strength) is a little slower than in previous games (which is not a bad thing), and it is represented by eight dots in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. Next to the jump meter is your points total, and next to that is the timer (in green) that counts upwards. Your lives are shown on the right-hand side of the screen, and next to those are the number of flies you’ve eaten. These flies are a new addition to the game, and each one you eat extends the time you have to complete a level, and adds to your bonus multiplier upon escaping a cave.

The chasing dragon is once again present to harass you into making mistakes, although in this game it is smaller than in the original ZX Spectrum Bugaboo, which means that it can pretty much get you wherever you hide, which is a little unfair. In the original Bugaboo you could hide in crevices, and it couldn’t reach you, but in this that doesn’t seem to be the case.

You do, however, have a new weapon available to you that can temporarily destroy the dragon! You can blow bubbles in the direction of your momentum (up if you’re moving up; down if you’re moving down; and also diagonally). This is a game-changer, although – to be fair – it’s not the easiest mechanic to use. In most cases it’s better to make tiny jumps and fire bubbles (done by pressing Space when you’re airborne), than making strong jumps (because it seems that you can fly ahead of the bubbles and end up hitting the dragon first – before the bubble). You at least seem to have the ability to shoot infinite bubbles, so you can fire away without worrying that you might run out of flea bubble spit.

There’s also one other significant hostile that has been introduced to the game – that will kill eat Poogaboo too – and that is the spider. If you’re caught in one of their webs in any of the caves, then you’ll lose a life. And – most frustratingly – in some cases, when this happens, you’re sent back to the very beginning of the cave. Spider’s webs are a real problem in Poogaboo, because you can’t often see them before hitting them, and they’re also often placed below areas that you can easily fall down. And, as far as I can tell, you can’t shoot spiders with bubbles because they’re hidden, until they feel your vibrations on their web.

One thing that does bug me a little about Poogaboo is that the screen doesn’t scroll quite as it should. What I mean by that is that Poogaboo is not kept in the centre of the screen at all times (as he should be, really), so he can sit near the edge of the screen and the background won’t scroll, which is a problem because you really need to see as much of the surrounding space before deciding where to jump. While this doesn’t completely ruin the gameplay, it can cause some serious frustration if you jump into something that you didn’t see.

The gameplay in Poogaboo is good overall, though. The jumping mechanic is simple and fairly easy to get used to, and the first level is thankfully not too difficult to complete. From the second level onward, though, you really have to have a good memory, and a good feel of the jumping process, to escape from the caverns. You can have a good run, and then end up losing all your lives in quick succession. Which can be hair-tearingly frustrating. I think a password system would have been a good idea in this game, so that you didn’t have to keep beating the early levels over and over. Or the devs should’ve at least given you a number of different levels to start on, rather than having you start from the very beginning every time. Or – like in the ZX81 version of La Pulga – a level editor might also have been welcome.

In spite of its faults, Poogaboo is still fun to play now. Or, maybe “fun” is not the right word. It’s a fine line between “fun” and “frustrating”, which is always what La Pulga has been about.

More: Poogaboo on Moby Games