Daffy Duck in Hollywood (Master System)

It's got the genuine Looney Tunes music! And also bubbles on the logo for some reason. I left this on for a while to see if an intro appeared, but all that happens is Daffy's Oscar gets taken away and he's left miserable.

Excellent, it seems I have a choice of what combat zone I want to be airlifted into first. Wait, wasn't I playing a Daffy Duck game about movies a second ago? Is this the war movie level or something?

'Scalp Trouble', hmm doesn't sound like a war movie. By the look of the silver guy opposite Daffy it's a robot cowboy film.

This actually looks pretty awesome for a Master System game. It all moves very slick and Daffy is animated well. Catchy music too. All good so far.

I've found myself a little fairy which hovers over my head, and some power ups just bubbled up from the ground. A bit weird, but I'm not complaining. I love collecting cryptic icons, who knows what powers they might contain! Not me that's for certain.

Well now I know what the fairy does, or did. It's a one use shield, which I just wasted by getting shot by a creature hiding under a rock.

Well this is the far right edge of the map, I can't scroll any further across. This green part looks like it might move, but nothing I do will budge it.

Eventually the game takes pity on me and throws up a hand pointing towards the opposite direction. I guess I'm going left again then.

Son of a bitch. These slopes are absolutely deadly. I couldn't see the spiky cacti from the top, I had no idea it was going to lead anywhere dangerous. I definitely had no idea that the second I stepped on the slope Daffy would immediately slip down and die in one hit.

Well now I know you can't jump on enemies. Without a fairy, Daffy is entirely defenceless and can be killed in one hit from anything. Even a weird, possibly sentient, walking cactus.

That's it? I get a few lives and zero continues? Somehow I don't think I'll ever be finishing this one.

But it seems interesting, so I'll give it another shot anyway.

Hey it's the shiny desperado from earlier. Let's see how he likes bubbles to the face.

Seems I managed to collected a homing bubble power up along the way somewhere, my shots swooped down and turned the metal cowboy into a metal bubble.

Immediately my Bubble Bobble training kicked in, and I ran up to touch the bubble, sending it flying off screen. There's no exit this way through, so I'll keep searching.

Ah! The level continues underneath me. I just need to find a hole in the ground somewhere.

Hey, there's another one of those metal enemies. I wonder if my homing shots can hit him from here... (they can).

Still no bloody exit though.


LATER.

And now the wall of leaves opens up! Apparently I wasn't bored and frustrated enough to enter first time around, but now that's no longer a problem.

Or maybe I just have to clear the area of robot cowboy things before it unlocks. Yeah, that seems more logical now that I think about it.

Hmm, non-metallic bandits turn into weird blobs when I bubble them. I'm going to make a wild guess, and say that means I don't have to kill regular enemies to unlock doors.

I still have to walk into them to finish them off though.

Okay, I get it! I'll go off looking for more shiny enemies then.

Son of a bitch. Putting a bottomless pit there is a cruel trick. There was no hint that this was any different from the last few ledges I dropped down from to get here.

At least the game has the decency to start me off at the last leaf door, instead of making me restart at the very beginning again.

Now I've gotten into the habit of always checking my path before I leap.

The game actually has a very good 'camera'. I can move the screen around to recon the area by ducking, and when I'm walking around it pulls across to show me a little more of what's ahead of me.


LATER.

Level complete! Wow, I wonder what those letters would spell out if I'd found all of them.

Don't want to be here! I've got a stone spitter embedded in the wall above me and one underneath, so I'm a stone's throw from game over. But I need to get up there and kill that thing to finish this level, so up I go.

And then I got stoned to death, just as a '1up' pick up bubbled up above me. And that's the end of it, I'm out of lives.

Daffy Duck in Hollywood (Genesis/Mega Drive)

The 16-bit version has the same gameplay more or less, but different levels and music. And art obviously. Also I have to collect timed explosives instead of killing shiny enemies. This version gives me hit points, but it also gives me a time limit to deal with, and likes to hide the bombs behind objects and in secret passages. Oh, also the deathtrap slopes are still present.


At their core these both seem like reasonably solid, well made games, tainted by some dodgy game design choices. I really did want to like them, but they're both a pain in the ass! Still, they were both way more entertaining for me than Oscar, another movie related platformer I played a while back. Even though I still don't get how jumping around shooting cowboys with a bubble gun has anything to do with Hollywood.