Spud's Adventure is a 1991 Action-Adventure game by Atlus developed for the Game Boy as part of the Puzzle Boy franchise. The game follows Spud, a wandering potato who vows to rescue Princess Mato from the clutches of Devi, who has locked her away deep within his tower. There, he finds knights who tried to fight off Devi previously, each of them failing. After rescuing them, they team up to stop Devi and Save the Princess.
Gameplay revolves around scaling Devi's tower, defeating enemies, solving puzzles, and leveling up along the way, while collecting power-ups to increase chances of success.
Spud's Adventure contains examples of:
- All There in the Manual: The manual offers more detail to the game's story; the King is named Vegitan the 5th, and Devi is the Lord of the Far Tower who commands the Kitchen Army. Devi used to live in the card kingdom of Uker but was so nasty he was thrown out, and the cards followed him to keep him out of trouble.
- Alliterative Name: There's player character Terry Turnip and NPC Peppo Pepper.
- Anthropomorphic Food: The main cast are living vegetables, and bosses include a pumpkin, bean pods, olives, and corn.
- Art-Style Dissonance: The characters are adorable anthropomorphic food with cute chibi sprites, but the story is surprisingly serious, especially when Arnie and Devi die.
- Badass in Distress: Both the knights that Spud has to rescue, as well as Terry, can hold their own in a fight, it's just that Devi somehow managed to get to them first.
- Battle Boomerang: Arnie Eggplant's default weapon is a boomerang that is slower than Spud's shot and can only be fired one at a time, but is stronger, can go through walls and behind you, and has a long, angled range.
- Big Damn Heroes: Spud happens on Devi in the middle of executing Gerrit Carrot with a cannon and saves Gerrit by blocking the shot.
- Blackout Basement: Some dungeon levels have the lights flicker on and off to make navigating difficult.
- Block Puzzle: Like its parent series, some levels have you pushing blocks into specific places to open doors.
- But Now I Must Go: Spud has to leave and continue wandering after the game is over. Princess Mato decides to go with him.
- Character Level: Defeating enemies allows Spud and company to gain experience points. Once one hundred of them are accumulated, they gain half a heart in health.
- Continuing is Painful: Continuing after a Game Over resets your level and health back to 1, making it very easy to die again.
- Damsel in Distress: Unlike the other people Spud rescues, Princess Mato has no fighting prowess whatsoever and needs the group's help to break free.
- The Drifter: As noted at the beginning of the game, Spud is a wanderer who just so happened to be in town when Princess Mato was kidnapped. He decides to go off again at the end of the game.
- Death from Above: As Arnie Eggplant can attest to.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: Spud cradles Arnie Eggplant as he dies and gives a last request.
- Doppelgänger Attack: The attack gained by the spade card lets you throw your 'shadow' as a weapon, which manifests as a clone of yourself. It's stronger than Spud's default weapon and most importantly shares your large hitbox, and any character can use it until they take a hit.
- Easy Levels, Hard Bosses: Climbing the tower isn't nearly as tough as defeating the bosses, as while enemies can swarm you, they have set respawn points, and you can grind enough EXP to max your HP fairly easily and restore any lost health. Bosses have no such luxury, hit hard, and most of all have huge hitboxes and erratic movement patterns, making them very easy to die or get a Game Over to.
- Even Evil Has Standards: When an earthquake strikes the tower, Devi rushes to relocate Princess Mato before the jail caves in—he wanted to imprison her, not kill her.
- Evil Laugh: Devi lets out his pretty much every time you meet him.
- Fisher King: The manual describes how with Princess Mato gone, the Vegetable Kingdom became sad and droopy, with her father ready to wilt.
- Game-Over Man: Devi appears on the Game Over screen to taunt you if you lose.
- Ghost Reunion Ending: In the ending, Arnie and Devi's spirits smile down on Spud, the princess, and the knights from the afterlife.
- Graceful Loser: Devi turns out to be one, as he takes his defeat in stride.
- Greater-Scope Villain: While Devi is the more immediate threat, having kidnapped Mato and all that, it's eventually revealed that Devi is just taking orders from Dodorian, the real leader of the Kitchen Army.
- Healing Potion: Peppo the Pepper hangs around on dungeon floors with his Power Pepper potion, which restores your health once you talk to him.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Arnie Eggplant pushes his friend Terry Turnip out of the way of falling rocks, and gets killed by them.
- Interface Screw: Some rooms swap the controls, reversing left and right and up and down.
- Level-Up Fill-Up: Gaining 100 EXP will level you up and restore all your health, making it useful even in cases where you can't increase your max health anymore.
- Mad Bomber: Gerrit Carrot is directly called this in the manual and it's noted his bomb-throwing techniques scare enemies.
- Mood Whiplash: The entire game has adorable sprites and an upbeat tone, and then Arnie is killed and doesn't come back, with Devi also being killed by the real big bad.
- Mr. Exposition: Waterman, the first vegetable to go to the Far Tower and live to tell about it, offers advice periodically to help save Princess Mato, whom he loves.
- Oddball in the Series: The rest of the Puzzle Boy games are puzzle games without a story, while this one is a dungeon-crawling action game with puzzle elements and a plot.
- Our Demons Are Different: Devi looks like a small winged imp, and he is mortal just like anyone else.
- The Paralyzer: Terry Turnip's special weapon is a beam that stuns enemies for a bit, letting her harmlessly walk through them.
- Pet the Dog:
- Devi rushes to rescue Princess Mato from her prison after an earthquake strikes, moving her to a more secure cell.
- In a scene exclusive to the Japanese version of the game, Devi agrees to not attack Spud midway through the tower because his sister convinces him.
- After you defeat him, Devi sees Spud as a worthy opponent and speculates that they could've been friends in another life, and also tells him information about where the princess is located. This last one gets him killed.
- Pixel Hunt: Some floors have you finding a key in a completely dark room. Since these rooms have no enemies, the challenge is simply to search the floor until you find it.
- Player Versus Player: Versus Mode was possible with two Game Boys, two copies of the game, and the Game Boy Link Cable. The object was to use all four veggies to race up the tower and save Princess Mato first.
- Recruitment by Rescue: After each rescue, Spud can be swapped out with the other party members by pressing A.
- Redemption Equals Death: Devi, after his defeat, decides to give the party some advice on how to defeat his master Dodorian, as well as the location of the princess. For this, he is rewarded with an arrow to the chest and dies.
- Route Boss: Depending on which path you take in the third level, you can either fight two bean pods or an angry olive.
- Save the Princess: The game's plot revolves around saving Princess Mato from Devi.
- Significant Anagram: The passwords in the English version are anagrams of the vegetable-themed passwords in the Japanese version, which were "cabbage", "burdock", "spinach", and "soybean".
- Sizeshifter: Obtaining a diamond card will allow the player to grow until they leave the current floor, granting invincibility and crushing anything in their path in the process. Devi uses this ability in his boss fight with you, though thankfully he's not invincible.
- Spared by the Adaptation: A very unusual version where a player character is spared by the Versus Mode. Arnie Eggplant dies in single-player mode, but lives throughout Versus Mode as both players can control all four veggies.
- Take Over the World: Waterman explains that Dodorian kidnapped Princess Mato in an attempt to take over the Vegetable Kingdom.
- This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: While you can play as other characters for the tower floors, Spud is automatically chosen for boss fights. This is enforced in-story for the final boss, as only Spud's weapon will work on him.
- Thrill Seeker: According to the manual, Spud lives for danger and adventure—the bigger the risk, the better.
- Throw Down the Bomblet: Gerrit Carrot's special weapon is a bomb that drops instantly and explodes in an outward range for about 3 seconds.
- Unwanted Rescue: Gerrit Carrot is too proud to thank Spud when he's rescued from being killed.
