Thursday 12 May 2011

Bucky O'Hare (NES)

I can't remember ever seeing this series, but weirdly I do remember the theme tune.

They probably actually all deserted just to get off that nasty looking spaceship.

Those are some pretty terrible names for planets. Blinky's a pretty bad name too now that I think about it.

Excellent, a level select screen! I can choose any world I want to start on.

Those coloured dots may appear at first glance to be stars in the distance, but that giant frog shaped spaceship actually seems to be flying behind them.

Dammit, I missed by inches.

Shockingly for a NES game, it turns out that this is another platformer. I can't jump on enemies, but I can shoot them so that's okay. No double jump, but I do have a charged jump that apparently makes me jump... exactly as high as the regular jump. Which is less than useful.

Crap, 8 directional turrets! Time to just run.

OH SHIT, WASPS! I thought it was just a flower. I hate wasps, go away you little bastards.

Okay, I got the wasps off me, but now there are spiders coming down?

Crap, they're exploding spiders. Not the worst kind of spider, but pretty bad.

Another spider explodes against the night's sky. How tall is this tree anyway? Have I been jumping all the way into night time, or have I just jumped above the planet's atmosphere?

More simple jumping challenges. No match for my practised platforming skills.

Oh crap, they're swinging! Moving platformers are hard!

Okay forget the green planet for now, I'll go check out the red planet instead.

Lava. I should have guessed really.

Man, I hate it when they put spikes on the ceiling in platform games. Like I don't have enough hazards around to keep track of, now I have to watch how high I jump too.


I don't get it, the pit is too deep to just jump out of, the path on the left is a dead and, and the exit I just tried has insta-kill spikes along the top which instantly killed me.

Oh. Turns out the power up I'd collected down there had increased my power bar, meaning that I can charge my charged jumps up to the point where they're useful now.

These levels actually have a decent amount of variety to them. Like now I'm pushing boulders into the lava to give myself a platform to jump on.

That's weird, these tunnels at the sides are all blocked. They don't even wrap around to the left side of the screen, it's just an invisible wall.

Oh shit, I think I've figured out where those tunnels lead.

Oh shit, oh shit, oh... damn, I'm dead.

I can't figure out how to outrun this lava, every time I just end up dying in the exact same spot. I'll leave it for now and go try the blue planet instead.

You know, I was expecting 'ocean world', not 'slidey ice world'.

Well that's... interesting. Right at the start I'm blocked off by a wall of ice. Well, he doesn't want to crawl or roll past it.

Shooting it doesn't seem to do any good.

Nope, can't jump over it either.

Well. Next planet then.

Uh... screw it, I'm just running past all these.

Keep running, pay no attention to the turrets and enemies firing from all directions! Or the... incredibly tiny space fighters. Those things seemed a lot bigger when they were harassing my ship in the intro.

Ah, that's more like it! Well, they're still a bit on the tiny side, but they're large enough to fit a pilot inside at least. I've got to jump up from ship to ship, while dodging or shooting asteroids, to eventually make it onto a ledge at the top of the level.

It's a pain in the ass.

Awesome, I did it! I jumped those spaceships!

Now what though? I'm stuck on a small moon with nowhere obvious to go. Unless I'm supposed to jump on the asteroids that hurt me on the last stage.

Uh, I give up. It's not a terrible game, but I'm all out of curiosity.

2 comments:

  1. You need to use Blinky to get through that icy level. Just beat the Planet, and you'll save him. You can change characters by pressing SELECT button. ;)

    And, yeah, pretty good game, although there was kind of cruel situation with it in terms of piracy and such. Pirates usually removed copyrights from the game, and this was one of them, and Konami put a copyright protection thingy, like if the copyrights are edited, then the random data somewhere in the game's code. In this case, you die from 1 hit in that version. FROM EVERYTHING!! No kidding!! If you want to learn how it works, you can also type HARD! as a password at the beginning to feel the pain of the people who played this game in hard mode on a bootlegs.
    It might be not a particulary interesting fact, but that's something I felt that's needed to be pointed out. ;)

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  2. Feels a bit misleading - they give you a gun, and nothing to shoot! The whole world(s) is your enemy, and it throws every trick in the book at you. Rolling things, moving things, sliding things, snakes (and ladders). Good job it has infinite continues!

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