Bugs Bunny's Birthday Blowout for NES review

During my last online shopping spree for NES games, I saw the game Bugs Bunny's Birthday Blowout for sale at a pretty decent price. I never played the game myself, but I figured that I would give it a shot.

I'm pretty surprised at the number of very negative reviews that this game has online. It isn't the best game or the worst game; it is pretty much in the middle. It is a fairly standard platformer, but it does a lot of cool things in my opinion. First of all, I like the character sprites of the Looney Tunes characters. The sprites actually looks like the cartoon characters, even the characters who only appear for a short time; the Daffy Duck sprite could be used for a Daffy Duck game, the Taz sprite for a Taz game, and so on. The levels could be quite a bit more detailed, but there are moments here and there with both background and foreground, which is always impressive. There's also a really neat dynamic where there are carrot blocks which solidify once you have touched them and collected the carrot.

Look at all the fine details in the background!

 Unfortunately, it is held back by some odd flaws. The first problem is the odd plot. The premise of the game is that Bugs Bunny is having a surprise party, so the Looney Tunes gang gets jealous and wants to kill him. Maybe WB couldn't think of enough villains, as it seems that you have to attack some of Bugs' friends over the course of the game. It is odd that you'll encounter Tweety, Foghorn Leghorn, and Sylvester, and you'll hit them with a large mallet. I won't give any spoilers, but the ending of the story is also really weak and silly, but part of that is to be expected from the 8-bit system.

This bonus stage makes the game ridiculously easy. Enjoy all the extra lives, yo.

The biggest flaw of the game is that it is too easy, mainly because of the bonus stages, especially the one that has the grid with numbers. The game wants to give you extra lives over and over again. I beat this game the first time that I played it, ending it with over thirty lives left.  That's right, thirty lives. The boss battles are repetitive and easy, and the battles feel like they lack any real originality.

I give Bugs Bunny's Birthday Blowout a 5.25 out of 10. It isn't the worst NES game, but it also isn't the best one.