I had no idea that there was an arcade game based on The Smurfs, but it totally makes sense. Back in the early 80s, thanks to the ever present cartoon, the little blue people seemed to be absolutely everywhere.

Not only was I completely unaware of there being a Smurfs arcade game, but I’d also never seen the Atari 2600 port of it either.

So when I discovered it, and how cheap it was to acquire for Atari’s classic console, I snapped it up as soon as I could.

Smurf, also known as Smurf Rescue and even Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel’s Castle (make your smurfing minds up, CBS!), is a single player platformer in which you’re cast as a brave Smurf, setting off from their village on a quest to rescue Smurfette from, you guessed it, Gargamel’s Castle.

Along the way, you’ll encounter all manner of deadly obstacles that’ll kill you with one hit, such as fences, gentle streams, steps and the sides of chairs.

That’s right: touch anything even remotely deemed an obstacle and you lose a life; it’s very punishing. I guess your little Smurf really should have stayed at home and sent someone a bit tougher. Was Hefty Smurf not available?

Anyway, it all looks and sounds lovely for an Atari 2600 game; a passable (by Atari 2600 standards) rendition of the Smurfs theme tune plays throughout and there’s a really varied set of single screen platform challenges to overcome, on your way to rescue the only female Smurf in existence.

The thing is, not only does it seem super weird that just about everything you touch is lethal, but also, the game’s mechanics are very odd indeed.

You can jump, but your normal jump won’t even clear the fence, which is the very first obstacle you reach in the game. In order to jump high enough to clear that fence, and many other obstacles you need to overcome, you’ll need to jump once, then immediately jump again to do a more powerful, higher jump.

Yep, you’re forced to jump twice, just about every time you need to get past anything, which is incredibly weird, and feels completely unnecessary.

It just feels as if it’s an extra layer of challenge added in just for the sake of it; I know that games at the time aped the difficulty level of arcade games that were deliberately hard in order to drain you of your coins, but Smurf takes even the most basic mechanic to a ridiculously challenging extreme.

Still, it’s a satisfying enough game once you do get over that ridiculous difficulty curve, and even when you do there’s still plenty of challenge, as later stages layer on further obstacles, such as moving birds and hissing snakes, to the scenes you’ll be working your way through.

That weird jumping mechanic aside, Smurf feels like a really polished experience with some lovely, flicker free visuals. It’s just a shame that its difficulty is tuned so high, but the same can be said for so many Atari 2600 games.

If you need to know, it works nicely on the Atari 2600+, so feel free to pick up a copy for yourself, and curse that stupid double jump mechanic, on your modern version of the classic console.

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