For game club my friend Laureline picked out this Konami game. It’s a jump and shoot with a cartoony sci-fi animals license and a cult following. I found it very difficult!
This NES title was released alongside an arcade beat-em-up meant to be a capper on the animated series. This version is fairly light on plot (Bucky’s four crew mates are incapacitated on separate planets; save them then fight the evil toad guy) but heavy on action, and deadly death traps of death. Directed and co-programmed by Masato Maegawa who would soon go on to found Treasure, I regarded it as a proto-Treasure title and although I’m not overly familiar with their catalogue, I recognised similarities to Gunstar Heroes with its range of weapons and bombastic bosses.
The setup with four different planets to choose from, then a series of levels with all crewmates available, is a little bit Rockman. Despite the freedom of choice, it’s wisest to start with green and impossible to progress in blue until Blinky is rescued there. The different crew members (Bucky the green rabbit, a cat, a duck, a small robot, and… a human boy) can be swapped between at any time once they’re unlocked, which leads to situations especially in the closing levels where choosing the right one for the situation is crucial and satisfying.
Each character has a different kind of basic shot, and holding the button charges another ability. These range from fairly useless to extremely situational, so that picking up P tokens to extend the relevant bar per character isn’t that helpful. These extensions also persist between game overs; on the other hand, life extensions are global but do not persist.
This will come up on a normal playthrough: as mentioned, stages are full of insta-death pits, spikes, and enemies, and the characters’ jumps are weak. One demanding lava-stream sequence comes to mind as particularly frustrating. Bosses have insta-kill attacks and even will often outright kill you on contact as well. It all seems very harsh, especially the occasional “gotcha” traps. I of course used savestates and rewinds liberally; I can’t imagine playing this game without them.
The difficulty really is a huge barrier to entry, but looking past that there’s a lot to appreciate. The theme of course is fun, being based on a comic and animated series about anthropomorphic animal space adventurers. There’s lots of memorable moments and setpieces. And having five characters to swap between at any time is a cool idea. I think Treasure is known for ambition in their sidescrolling action games (among other genres) and this certainly shows that, even if the ideas here aren’t always executed as well as I would hope. From the perspective of the time, maybe the intention is to master its intricacies over time instead of slamming through it in two evenings with emulator features, but hey. I still had a decent time.
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