Folks, it’s time to break some controllers.
If you know anything about Konami’s 1989 NES release The Adventures of Bayou Billy, it’s likely related to the game’s difficulty. In truth, it might be the most notoriously difficult video game of all time. It is so notorious that the animated video game master Captain N stated that not even he could beat it. Honestly, if he can’t do it, no one can. This is canon.
To sum up the story, you play as Not Crocodile Dundee, henceforth known as “Bayou Billy,” and adventurer who has to rescue a female NPC, as was the case in just about every late 80s action game. From a gameplay standpoint, this has a lot of hallmarks of the genre – waves of enemies to beat up, weapons to collect, etc. The bulk of the game consists of that sort of thing, but it also mixes things up a bit by including both driving levels and light gun ones – it’s one of the few NES games that tries to take advantage of the console’s different control schemes.
So is it as miserably hard as they say? Yes. It really, really is. I tried for as long as I could without going insane, just to get past the first level so that I could show off some of the various things this game does. I couldn’t do it. Either the early wave of three bad guys at once was too much to handle or the crocodiles that I inexplicably have to fight finished the job. This is an infuriating little game, and I want you all to know that I tried my best.
There’s an important distinction to make, I think, between a game being difficult and a game being bad. Bayou Billy is not, in the traditional sense, a bad game – it looks and sounds good, and capably executes what it sets out to do. Unfortunately, what it sets out to do is just so, so, SO brutal.
The fact that it’s this difficult leaves me unsure of how to properly review it – is the fact that I could barely progress a sufficient reason to declare the game “bad,” or does it mean I can’t really evaluate the game at all? It’s a conundrum that’s put off my release of this review, and I’ve ultimately concluded that I just don’t know. Bayou Billy is an enigma.
It was also a rather tremendous idea to mix action, light gun, and racing stuff into one game. You’d even think that Konami could reasonably be the company to make it all work. Alas, they missed the mark on this one pretty severely.
…or did they?
Okay yes, they did. However, a couple of years after Bayou Billy was released, Konami re-branded the game for Japanese audiences under the name Mad City. In so doing, they also dramatically lowered the difficulty, to make it more in line with what players would likely expect. I was able to check this one out for a bit, and it’s definitely a lot more fun. If you have the means to do so, I definitely recommend Mad City. Bayou Billy, not so much.
Next week, we’ll be checking out a game on a console that has never been featured in Retro Roulette before. What console could it be? Give me your best guess and I’ll see you then.