Approximate Release Month: February 1993
Genre: Platformer
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
The greatest success of Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose! is the great looking graphics.
It doesn’t look exactly like the cartoon – I’m sure Nintendo Power wrote an article or two saying just that, though – but it gets a lot of the humor and character right. Everything is bright and colorful and the backgrounds are well detailed. Buster Busts Loose! is everything a fan of the show would want in a 16-bit adaptation, which is all the more impressive considering this is still an early Super Nintendo game. There aren’t a ton of great looking games yet on the console.
Much like the most recent Loony Tunes game, Road Runner’s Death Valley Rally, Buster Busts Loose! isn’t a traditional platformer. Those two games are surprisingly similar, in fact. You can’t hop on enemies to take them out! Buster comes equipped with a flip kick instead. It’s a frustrating attack at first; after you hit the button, Buster leaps up in the air and then sticks out his leg on the way back to the ground. Only once his foot comes out can he damage bad guys, so the timing is difficult to adjust to. It’s a lot like Road Runner’s peck attack in its game.
Another similarity to Death Valley Rally: Buster has a dash move. With just a tap of a shoulder button, Buster books it in a straight line and can climb walls. You aren’t invincible, though, and it runs out quickly. It only takes a few screens in the first level before the game tasks you with running up walls and jumping across gaps in quick succession. It’s easy with the responsive controls in Buster Busts Loose!
The one major downside to Buster Busts Loose! is the lack of difficulty. Most enemies can be avoided by hopping over them with no chance of retaliation. There are three difficulty modes, but I couldn’t tell a difference other than the amount of health and the number of continues you start with.
I don’t think the ease of Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose should be a major deterrent to playing it. The game is very obviously aimed at kids, but it’s solid enough in every other respect to be worth checking it out.
Tomorrow: I find the title The Combatribes to be offensively stupid. Maybe the game is better!
