TINY TOON ADVENTURES: BUSTER'S BAD DREAM
Original Release: Conspiracy Entertainment, 2001, Game Boy Advance
A very limited release and the last of the Tiny Toons licensed games from the heyday of the series sends the franchise out on an odd beat-em-up note (and one never released in Japan). Mostly available in Europe, with very few copies made available in the US years later as "Scary Dreams"
Buster's Bad Dream / Scary Dreams (GBA, Conspiracy, 2001)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
In the '90s and '00s Treasure developed something of a reputation for taking licensed properties that could have easily been chicken doodoo and making chicken salad out of them somehow instead. That Ronald McRonald game for the Genesis, Astro Boy for the GBA, and so on. Buster's Bad Dream is, unfortunately, one that kinda just came out as chicken droppings.
The setup is Montana Max gets some ray gun that traps all of the other Tiny Toons in Buster's dream, and he has to brawl through a number of levels to release them. Yet you can also freely choose them as partners for the level, so repeat to yourself it's just a show I guess.
Anyway, while the story setup is simple and conventional cartoon stuff, the gameplay is odd. Treasure was known for being experimental, but this one just kinda throws together odd archaic elements in an odd way. It's a flat-plane beat-em-up for starters, and with the unusual choice of having just one attack button and having you jump with the up arrow. The other button calls out your chosen partner to do a special attack (kinda like a Marvel vs Capcom assist). Now it's true the GBA was not laden with available buttons beyond this, but L and R seem to sit there completely unused as far as I can tell.
So I get the basic conceit here, it's almost like 2D Devil May Cry. The general object is to air-juggle enemies with your blows and toss them backwards into each other to compensate for your general lack of offense. Some enemies also have patterns, like the panthers you encounter almost right off the bat can be hit three times before you have to jump to avoid their swipey claw.
There are a few big problems with implementation though. One is just that none of this is consistent. Heaps of enemies come out and are all doing their own thing, so executing "proper" timing against them is often even questionably possible at all. Another big issue is that the game has some serious slowdown when more than four or five enemies appear. The partners are also by and large a total joke, they leave you vulnerable for a second while you deploy them and are sent back off without attacking if hit first, and enemies nearly always dive right in at them and KO them during this little window, it's hard to find a safe moment to actually use their limited attacks.
It's also very demanding. You seemingly have a long life bar at first, but you just get the one for the whole level with no health refills. Die, and you have to tediously work through the whole level again from the start.
I think the idea was for this to have surprisingly complex mechanics for you to spend some time mastering, and to some degree maybe it does. But they're too inconsistent, they're basically not explained or demonstrated at all in-game (and reports about the manual indicate that doesn't cover everything important either), and the flat boring levels with repetitive enemy sets really don't entice you to keep playing and become frustrating when you're packed back to the beginning of them over and over and over. Maybe there's something to wring from it with a substantial time investment, but unless you're some giant fan of the show there seems little reason to bother.
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