Before I can talk about The Adventures of Bayou Billy, I first need to talk about it's original Famicom iteration Mad City.
Mad City is mainly a beat'em up, but also has driving and shooting stages with optional zapper support. The driving and shooting stages are okay, I was actually kinda shocked by how beatable the shooting stages were with the pad aside from the duo boss in stage 7 who were horrific. The beat'em up sections unfortunately are the weakest area of the game, your attacks are incredibly simplistic with you only being able to punch, kick, or jump kick. Punching people also isn't very satisfying and enemies have an annoying tendency to just punch you right back. I basically just jump kicked 90% of the time until I got the whip later.
Either way, Mad City is passable. It's not fantastic or anything, but nothing I'd say is terrible. 2.5/5 stars maybe.
Unfortunately, Konami of America or whoever was responsible thought it was nessessary to make this game completely unbeatable and utterly abominable to play. In Bayou Billy enemies do twice as much damage, tank twice as many hits and can now move twice as fast rendering them really annoying to deal with, because not only do the fuckers take way too much damage, but they also constantly walk away from you like a bunch of pansies. The health bar you had in the driving sections is also now gone, enjoy your OHKOs, these sections are fucking awful in Bayou Billy. The shooting sections? A lot less ammo. The oddest thing about all the changes is that they kept in Billy yelling "OH GOD" in the intro, and actually made your girlfriend more scanty looking, normally that shit got cut out when games were brought over to the States during this time period. I guess Konami was too busy making their games unfun for western audiences to bother censoring for our poor god-fearing souls. This version would get like 1/5 stars.
I also need to make a special shoutout to them swapping Mode A and Mode B around. In Mad City Mode A didn't use the zapper, in Bayou Billy it does. I played through the first stage of Bayou Billy only to not be able to use my pad for the zapper section. Thanks assholes.
So yeah, play Mad City. Avoid Bayou Billy. Or don't bother with either of them, you do you. The best thing the localization did was call the frogman enemy "Jacques Killstow".
Mad City is mainly a beat'em up, but also has driving and shooting stages with optional zapper support. The driving and shooting stages are okay, I was actually kinda shocked by how beatable the shooting stages were with the pad aside from the duo boss in stage 7 who were horrific. The beat'em up sections unfortunately are the weakest area of the game, your attacks are incredibly simplistic with you only being able to punch, kick, or jump kick. Punching people also isn't very satisfying and enemies have an annoying tendency to just punch you right back. I basically just jump kicked 90% of the time until I got the whip later.
Either way, Mad City is passable. It's not fantastic or anything, but nothing I'd say is terrible. 2.5/5 stars maybe.
Unfortunately, Konami of America or whoever was responsible thought it was nessessary to make this game completely unbeatable and utterly abominable to play. In Bayou Billy enemies do twice as much damage, tank twice as many hits and can now move twice as fast rendering them really annoying to deal with, because not only do the fuckers take way too much damage, but they also constantly walk away from you like a bunch of pansies. The health bar you had in the driving sections is also now gone, enjoy your OHKOs, these sections are fucking awful in Bayou Billy. The shooting sections? A lot less ammo. The oddest thing about all the changes is that they kept in Billy yelling "OH GOD" in the intro, and actually made your girlfriend more scanty looking, normally that shit got cut out when games were brought over to the States during this time period. I guess Konami was too busy making their games unfun for western audiences to bother censoring for our poor god-fearing souls. This version would get like 1/5 stars.
I also need to make a special shoutout to them swapping Mode A and Mode B around. In Mad City Mode A didn't use the zapper, in Bayou Billy it does. I played through the first stage of Bayou Billy only to not be able to use my pad for the zapper section. Thanks assholes.
So yeah, play Mad City. Avoid Bayou Billy. Or don't bother with either of them, you do you. The best thing the localization did was call the frogman enemy "Jacques Killstow".