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- Alternate versionsThe Japanese version features a bad ending not present in the US version. At the end, the player can avoid Annabelle's hug. If done long enough, this will trigger an ending where she notices that Billy no longer wants her, and tearfully says goodbye to him.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Until We Win: The Adventures of Bayou Billy (2009)
Featured review
NES at its best
There should be much more love for this classic NES game than I see displayed here, because only 11 votes and no reviews is kind of meager. I'm sure I am not the only one with warm feelings, since there is a lot to love.
For starters, it was one of the system's most diverse games, combining side-scrolling platform action, racing and shooting in one game, in a day and age where most games could get quite repetitive and monotonous. In most levels you'd have to defeat evil henchmen of the nefarious crime boss Gordon in hand-to-hand combat before you could proceed. There were two levels where you'd have to race by car to a destination before your fuel runs out (for some reason your car would blow up if you didn't make it), and the two most memorable levels made great use of the Zapper gun (Duck Hunt for more mature audiences).
Punching and doing flying kicks in the beat-'m-up levels was fun, but the real kick came from obtaining weapons such as whips and knives. Whipping or stabbing baddies to death was disturbingly fun, because the game's difficulty was high enough to warrant some feelings of satisfaction if you survived, even after committing a small genocide among Gordon's gang. The race levels were always a bit frustrating (one hit and you lost a life), but finishing them did feel good. Especially rewarding were the two shoot-'m-up levels where you could engage in a killing spree with Schwarzenegger-like body counts. And there were even cool vests that would make bullets ricochet off (it took me a while before I realized that bullet-proof vests don't really work like that).
It's been thirty years and I still vividly remember the details of this game: the great music (I can still humm the boss theme), the nice changes in location (I even tried to track Billy's journey to New Orleans on a map), and the joy you got out of finally beating bosses like Luis Tor-Ture (I didn't get the pun until much later), Schwarz N. Eiger (that one I did get), and Rocky & Rocco (who didn't look anything like in the manual, BTW). I borrowed the game from a friend and was actually the first to finish it, which is undoubtedly another reason why I found it so memorable. Or it was because of its surprisingly cinematic finale, where lots of games from the time just came with a single "congratulations!" screen.
Oh boy, thinking back to this game brings back happy memories to a time where games were much simpler and uglier, but we didn't care because we really didn't know any better. In fact, the limitations of the technology probably forced a fair amount of creativity that led to the occasional Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda. I guess that time has been less kind to Bayou Billy, as it did not get increasingly better follow-ups on next generation consoles. Ah well, we have a special place reserved for that, called 'nostalgia memory'.
For starters, it was one of the system's most diverse games, combining side-scrolling platform action, racing and shooting in one game, in a day and age where most games could get quite repetitive and monotonous. In most levels you'd have to defeat evil henchmen of the nefarious crime boss Gordon in hand-to-hand combat before you could proceed. There were two levels where you'd have to race by car to a destination before your fuel runs out (for some reason your car would blow up if you didn't make it), and the two most memorable levels made great use of the Zapper gun (Duck Hunt for more mature audiences).
Punching and doing flying kicks in the beat-'m-up levels was fun, but the real kick came from obtaining weapons such as whips and knives. Whipping or stabbing baddies to death was disturbingly fun, because the game's difficulty was high enough to warrant some feelings of satisfaction if you survived, even after committing a small genocide among Gordon's gang. The race levels were always a bit frustrating (one hit and you lost a life), but finishing them did feel good. Especially rewarding were the two shoot-'m-up levels where you could engage in a killing spree with Schwarzenegger-like body counts. And there were even cool vests that would make bullets ricochet off (it took me a while before I realized that bullet-proof vests don't really work like that).
It's been thirty years and I still vividly remember the details of this game: the great music (I can still humm the boss theme), the nice changes in location (I even tried to track Billy's journey to New Orleans on a map), and the joy you got out of finally beating bosses like Luis Tor-Ture (I didn't get the pun until much later), Schwarz N. Eiger (that one I did get), and Rocky & Rocco (who didn't look anything like in the manual, BTW). I borrowed the game from a friend and was actually the first to finish it, which is undoubtedly another reason why I found it so memorable. Or it was because of its surprisingly cinematic finale, where lots of games from the time just came with a single "congratulations!" screen.
Oh boy, thinking back to this game brings back happy memories to a time where games were much simpler and uglier, but we didn't care because we really didn't know any better. In fact, the limitations of the technology probably forced a fair amount of creativity that led to the occasional Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda. I guess that time has been less kind to Bayou Billy, as it did not get increasingly better follow-ups on next generation consoles. Ah well, we have a special place reserved for that, called 'nostalgia memory'.
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- Field78
- Jun 6, 2018
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