Konami's Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose is a side-scrolling game released in 1992 for the SNES. The game is based on the then-popular cartoon show, where younger, alternative versions of Looney Tunes favourites attend Acme Looniversity to become the next generation of characters.
The player plays as Buster Bunny, the Tiny Toon equivalent of Bugs Bunny who you guide through the games' six levels. The game is presented as a TV show, with each episode lacking continuity and consistency across the levels. The game uses different environments, starting at the Looniversity, then moving to a western movie set, a haunted mansion, an American Football field, the sky, and finally space; which is strongly based on Star Wars. Between each episode, you play a bonus game where you can gain extra lives. These mini-games are mainly based on luck (Bingo, weight guessing game) but a few of them require some basic skill (Squash).
The main game-play style is a side-scrolling platform game. However, there's so many ideas in the game, you could say it suffers an identity crisis, although this is exactly what makes the game interesting.
For most of the game, you can progress at your own pace, but some levels use auto-scroll and if you leave the screen; then you fail. There are some awkward parts where the camera isn't positioned perfectly which can be misleading.
The American Football level is mainly a guessing game and you need basic American Football knowledge to understand what's going on. You need to travel 100 yards in total to score a touch-down, and to do so your task is broken down to achieve 10 yards in 4 attempts. You can choose to pass or run. You should choose to run unless you feel like you cannot meet the 10 yard requirement on the 4th attempt, in which case you should choose to pass. In this scenario, you must catch the ball because failing to do so fails the level. Failing to get 10 yards in 4 downs also fails, which is why you use it as a last ditch-attempt. When running, you need to duck, jump or do neither in hope of getting past the defenders that charge at you, but they come so fast its seems pure luck. It can be quite frustrating, but is strangely fun and cool.
In the usual levels, Buster can do a somersault attack move, jump, and dash. Using the dash is required in certain areas since Buster can even dash up walls. You have a dash-meter which replenishes after a few seconds, or by picking up Gogo Dodo statues.
There are stars to collect in the level which are also dropped by defeated enemies. 100 of these give you an extra life.
I found that Buster Busts Loose is a fairly difficult/punishing game. The levels are fairly big and split up into subsections. Buster can only take 3 hits but his life can be boosted by finding the golden carrots. Death means you have to start at the last subsection, and using a continue sends you back to the start of the level. You get 3 lives and 5 continues which means replaying the same sections is a frequent occurrence.
The frustrating thing with the game is how it requires trial-and-error. I think it's impossible for someone to complete a level the first time they visit it. There's plenty of good examples in the Spook Mansion level. As you start walking down the hallway, ghosts will come through the floor without warning. In the next section there's little balls that act as weights on the mechanisms. However, some of them are actually enemies in disguise. Later, there is a Dracula monster that turns into a bat and can only be damaged in Dracula form (which is unclear). Each of these aspects will mean you are bound to take a hit if you aren't aware of the enemies' location or how the enemies behave. You'll be dead by the time you have learned how all the enemies behave within that level.
There are three difficulties to choose from; Child, Normal and Challenge. If you select the Child difficulty, you play a cut down version of the levels with infinite continues. There's also a Challenge difficulty where Buster can only take one hit and has only 3 continues.
I remember really enjoying this game when I was little, although I don't think I made it much further than the American Football level. It's an okay game overall, but due to the lack of levels, it seems like they tweaked the lives/continue system to compensate for it. This means it can end up feeling a bit of a chore to play if you don't complete it within a few attempts. The mini-games could have had the potential to make the game much more interesting but the over-reliance on luck restricted that. There's plenty of ideas within the game and its easy to understand why people hold the game in high regard.