Welcome to another edition of Playing With Power. The review article that looks at all things Nintendo Entertainment System. And happy birthday! No, not to me, but I’m certain someone reading this may be celebrating a big ol’ B-Day this week. And what better way to celebrate than with the only major NES game that celebrates a birthday, The Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout. Is this Looney Tune title the life of the party? Or is it a party pooper? Let’s get down to it with this week’s review.
YEAR OF RELEASE: 1990
PUBLISHER: Kemco
GENRE: Action Platformer
In 1990, a lot of big events went down, but one that was certainly worth celebrating was the 50th anniversary of the very first official Bugs Bunny cartoon. This momentous event would lead to several big celebrations for Bugs’ 50th birthday. There was even a television special that looked back at the career of the world’s most famous hare, done in classic goofy TV special fashion. I still have the VHS tape somewhere.
But that wasn’t the only thing to celebrate the big 5-0 for Bugs. The wascally wabbit’s B-day would be celebrated with an NES game called “The Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout”. Kemco had already given us The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle. But as I mentioned before, that was a palette swap of a Famicom Roger Rabbit game. This would be a genuine article Bugs Bunny game.
The game was released in 1990 under several names worldwide. In the US, it was The Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout. In Japan, it was Happy Birthday Bugs. And in Europe, the game was simply The Bugs Bunny Blowout, putting far less emphasis on Bugs’ birthday. The game often has mixed feelings from most gamers, and was the subject of one of the more infamous episodes of the Angry Video Game Nerd? But is it that bad? Let’s delve in deeper.
COVER STORY
The cover is pretty awesome. Bugs along with a good chunk of the classic Looney Tunes characters, who for the most part, seem ready to finally take the wascally wabbit down. It focuses on the birthday of Bugs Bunny, and is a nice eye catcher for any fan of the Looney Tunes, or at the very least Bugs Bunny. I know it was one that caught my eye as a kid.
STORY
It’s Bugs Bunny’s birthday, and he’s been given an invitation to a birthday party. However, unbeknownst to Bugs, the party invitation has been sent by many of Bugs’ classic enemies, all wanting to do away with the rabbit for good, feeling that he has stolen their spotlight for way too long. Can Bugs make it to his party, and stop the other jealous Looney Tunes?
GAMEPLAY
The Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout is a one player acion platformer. You control Bugs bunny as he must travel from level to level to make it to his birthday party, all while avoiding his many jealous Looney Tune enemies. You move Bugs with the D-Pad, can jump with the A button, and use his hammer with the B button.
Bugs will have to travel through six levels, each with four rounds inside. Bugs will travel through a grassy hillside, to a desert stage, a fiery canyon, a haunted cave, a forest, and finally a deadly castle. Levels are decent length, never too long, or too short. Just right.
At the end of most of the rounds, Bugs will have to deal with one of his Looney Tune foes. These include Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Tweety, Sylvester and Son, Wile E Coyote, Yosemite Sam, Pepe Le Pew, and finally the Tazmanian Devil. You’ll mostly deal with Daffy, and he can be easily avoided in order to earn the carrot that will take you to the next level.
Bugs only has one major weapon in the game, and that’s the hammer. with the B button he can swing it at enemies to damage them. It’s a decent item, but it has terrible range, and a slight delay at times, often leading you to get hit very quickly. This is especially taxing during the boss fights. For example, when dealing with Sam or Elmer, you’ll hit them just as they shoot their weapon at you. It can be annoying, and also easy to lose a life in these stages.
Throughout each level there are a bunch of boxes, mostly containing carrots. Carrots in this game count as currency for the bonus levels at the end of each round. Bugs has to collect as many as possible. Other boxes include full health, a speed boost, and a stronger hammer shot. The latter two can be stopped after Bugs takes damage. Another interesting thing about the item boxes is that after they’re collected, the remaining box (which has the Warner Brothers logo on it) can now be used as a platform, which can get Bugs to places much easier.
You start with three lives, as well as three hit points that can take several hits from weaker enemies before fully vanishing. With the boss fights, and hazards like spikes or steaming barrels, you will take more damage, but for the most part, you should have an ample amount to make it through the game.
At the end of each stage is a bonus round. For the first three stages in the level, the game uses a sort of bingo system, where you press A and get random numbers. If they line up together, you earn extra lives. Three in a row nabs a 1-up, four in a row nabs you a 5-up, and a line of five in a row will earn you a 50-up. And while nabbing a 50-up can be tough, it’s pretty easy in this game to rack up lives. Every 10 carrots collected will earn you an extra turn, and the game ends when you don’t have 10 carrots to use.
The second bonus round is seen at the end of the fourth stage of each level. It’s your standard whack-a-mole game where Bugs must use his mallet to whack the weasels that pop up and down the six holes in the stage. Lives are earned each time Bugs gets the significant amount of hits to earn an extra life. It costs 20 carrots per turn, and again if you don’t have 20 to pay the cost, it’s game over.
While the game has decent platforming, and some control issues, one thing I don’t quite like is the general design of the game’s world, and the enemies chosen. While the bosses are old school Looney Tune characters, the enemies you face on the way are strange. Walking hammers, walking exploding clocks, walking soap boxes. And the levels, while okay in their own right, don’t quite give you a feeling of the Looney Tune world. It just feels kind of like a weird Mari0-Esque world that doesen’t fully resonate all that well, and that’s a shame.
The game is easy to beat, but does have plenty of cheap spots that can kill you instantly. However, the game is extremely generous with lives. In my last playthrough of the game, I was ending with over 60 lives remaining, even after losing quite a few in some of the more annoying stages. But should you actually lose all of your lives (though you really have to be a bad platforming gamer to do so) it’s game over with no continues. But with how easy this game can be, you won’t really have to worry about it.
GRAPHICS
Graphics are decent enough. The levels, while not really feeling Looney Tooney are still decently desinged. All the classic Looney Tune characters all look like their cartoon counterpart. And there are some decently done caricatures of Bugs Bunny in certain areas. Most of Kemco’s games were never really a graphical powerhouse (though the point-and-click games always looked great), but this is one of the better looking ones for certain.
There is this weird sort of shakiness with the levels when the stage scrolls, but that isn’t a major issue either. It’s really only noticeable in stages like the castle and the cave. At least to me that is.
MUSIC
The music is decent. Again, nothing that feels like classic Looney Tunes, but some peppy and energetic tracks that can be quite memorable and enjoyable. I prefer the song in the third level of the game the best, as it has the best sound to it in my opinion. But regardless, this is decent at best.
OVERALL THOUGHTS
When I was a little kid, I rented this game a lot. I would rent this, Ducktales, Tiny Toon Adventures, and Rescue Rangers almost every time I could. You could tell I was a bit more of a fan of licensed titles. I even remember when I had to leave for a whole day to some family event, that I had left the game on all day, and when I came back, it was surprisingly still working. I think it’s one of the first games I beat it fully as a kid (Been so long that I barely remember), but I did get pretty far, I think to Taz’s castle. I remember loving this game so much as a kid.
But replaying it as an adult, I can definitely say that in a lot of ways, it doesn’t fully hold up. Controls and hit detection can be sucky with Bugs’ awful weapon. It doesn’t ever give off a Looney Tunes feel, and it’s pretty simple even with some cheap areas. But with that said, I still like this game. It doesn’t fully stand the test of time, but for a simple little platformer, in the part of the NES era where far better platformers were being released, this one is decent enough. It’s flawed, but still fun. It’s another game AVGN has slammed in the past that I don’t agree with, and feel it was really only done for that stupid Bugs Bunny skit.
I think if you’re a fan of Bugs Bunny, or platformers, you should give it a shot. It’s far from the most perfect game on the console, but I think this is a birthday party that no one wants to miss out on.
RATING: Thumbs Up