Retroulette #33: Bugs Bunny In: Double Trouble

Those of you born on this side of the Willenium might not recognize Bugs Bunny outside of a few appearances on a  lunch box or some shit. Back in the day Bugs was the man. He played ball with Jordan, sang haunting melodies in black-face, and slapped Nazis in drag.

It was a simply more awesome time.

The point is, cartoons used to be fucking cool. Nowadays you're all into the Beyblades and Little Ponies and whatnot. Is Beyblades still a thing?

Actually, I don't know what my point is anymore.

Bugs Bunny game on the Genesis.

We're treated to the usual logo screens first of course.

Worst Logo Ever award goes to Probe Entertainment's gaping red hole.

But look at this shit:

Who the hell was playing Looney Toons games on the Sega Genesis in 1996? As a reminder, here is a small list of what gaming had to offer that year:

To answer my own question, I was the kid playing crappy shovelware Genesis games while everyone else was on a quest for Peach's cake. I didn't even hear there was a third dimension until like 1999.


Growing up poor sucks.



Back to the game...

First off, what the hell is that Meatwad-ish looking fellow on the bottom left? I remember he was some hairy monster with shoes on, I just don't remember why. He doesn't exactly fit in with the canon of talking cat, talking duck, talking bird, talking rabbit, talking Tasmanian devil. Then again, there was a Martian gladiator guy, so I'll shut up.

Here's the set up:

Here's the summary. Bugs Bunny falls asleep in that kid from Toy Story's room and dreams in 16-bit slides that Yosemite Sam is a mad scientist/wizard who has invented both a giant carrot serum and a robot for which he needs an organic brain even though that would technically make that a cyborg. Bugs ostensibly has one of those, so Gossamer (shit, yeah, that's his name) sneaks up behind him, and after what must surely be 20 missing frames of story, Bugs appears at a computer console for some reason.

On this screen are two scenarios to play. Duck Rabbit Duck is first so I play that.

The game starts and right away I have no idea what the hell I'm looking at.

That arrow tells me to go left. That's simple. I can do that.

Then Daffy Duck climbs a ladder in front of me and I'm like "Yo, what up Daff". But immediately he runs at me, and it hurts me. Daffy Duck is like all four Pac-Man ghosts in this game, he chases you all around the level and it kills you to touch him. In front of him you'll see that there's a massive jar of glue. You can pick that up and throw it on the ground in front of Daffy and it will slow him down when he runs through it because a pile of goo filled with broken glass doesn't raise any alarm bells for him.

"You rabbit batthtard"

Other than that though, this game confused the hell out of me. Other than "stay away from that asshole duck" I don't know what to do. There's signs everywhere, some with Bug' face, some with Daffy's, there's squirrels that throw nuts at me, sometimes Bugs with just be like this for some reason:

And I still have no idea what the hell I'm doing when I run out of time I didn't know I was losing, and Elmer Fudd shoots Daffy so I.....lose?

I thought "What the hell is going on here" less when I watched Mulholland Drive.

What I missed the first time, is that the rules of this mode scroll along the bottom of the computer monitor. I missed it, because it scrolls slower than the Snapple lady runs 5k. What it tells me is I gotta get Daffy to flip all those signs so that they show his face instead of mine. Then, Elmer Fudd will walk into the forest and be like "I shoot whatevo da sign tells me to" and shoots Daffy and then somehow I win that time.

Even with the rules laid out so neatly like that, I have a hard time with this shit. You have to keep Daffy close enough to you so that he follows you past all the signs (if you walk 10 feet away from him he forgets you ever existed) but far enough away that he doesn't kill you.The glue is actually pretty pointless because you just waste time waiting for Daffy to stop being a dipshit so he can follow you again.

Because I'm kickass at games, I only fail a few more times before I ace this level.

The next is very similar.

The only difference is it's impossible to beat this one. Every ladder leads to a dead end and the only hope of progress is a vine that you can't climb up, only slide down.

This brings my Duck Rabbit Duck career to an unremarkable end.

Luckily, there's another game type selectable!

Because I only learn a lesson when given to me by Bill Nye the Science Guy, I forget to read the rules again.

For brevity's sake, imagine I wandered around a maze filled with lions for 20 minutes silently screaming "What the spitting cockstorm is going on!?"

Also a bull kicked me into dynamite.

All in all, pretty rad.

You'll notice this picture of Bugs bunny smiling while surrounded by a menagerie of horrors as roughly the same as the title screen. Or not, who pays attention to that shit?

I can only partly blame the game for me not knowing what to do, yet I still entirely blame the game.