31. Happy Birthday Bugs (Kemco, Famicom, 1990)

Happy Birthday Bugs is a platformer released to commemorate Bugs Bunny's 50th birthday. My mind is immediately drawn to the conclusion that this year is therefore Bugs Bunny's 80th birthday, which makes me extra disappointed that we won't be getting Space Jam 2 until 2021. The ceaseless beat of time marches on, Doc.

Anyway, the game is a pretty bland platformer, though thankfully not quite as bland as previous Kemco offerings on the Famicom like Donald Duck or Superman. They also released Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle for the Game Boy, but that was more of a puzzle platformer, while Happy Birthday Bugs is your standard fare.

The game runs fairly poorly, and the jumping is only OK. All you are able to do other than jump is swing a large mallet, which has a very short reach. It reminds me of the frying pan in Panic Restaurant, though that game felt a lot better. If I am trying to engage enemies, bout half the time I take damage while getting hit. Thankfully you can just jump over most enemies, and you have a decently large health pool, so the game is not frustratingly difficult. One slightly neat feature is that you can hide behind bushes just by walking behind them, something you didn't really see much of in this era (though Super Mario Bros. 3 is a famous example).

Bosses are other Looney Tunes characters who are jealous and want to stop you from getting to your own Birthday party...weird setup but OK. The actual boss encounters are strange and very simple. For the first boss (Daffy Duck), you have to avoid him and do some platforming to collect a giant carrot. There was a sign that said "Rabbit Season", and I naively thought I could hit it to change it to "Duck Season", that would've been cool. The second boss (Tweety) is strange. He just hides in a bush and throws tomatoes at you if you approach, but he only takes one hit to beat, so it's just about figuring out the timing of when to hit him before he can hit you. By the time you get to Wile E. Coyote (level 4 boss), he starts acting like you would expect, chasing you around and attacking in a pattern. He still only takes one hit so you can just mash attack and be done with him. Not super exciting stuff.

After each boss, any carrots that you collected through the level are turned into bonus game chances. The bonus game is basically bingo, and I got lucky enough with it that I had over 10 lives after level 3, which is something that might happen to me in certain Mario games but not many other platformers.

2/5, Bugs Bunny and his mediocre games will outlive us all.