Booby Kids

NES

Nihon Bussan - 1987

Who’s even heard of this game! This game sucks. Why are you reading this?! Who are you?!! Why aren’t you out spending money on useless pointless console games featuring anatomically impossibly large breasts?!!!!

Clever, Possessed child. Clever. Whew. Let’s all envision Megaman for a second. Small guy, blue suit, blue helment. Right? Got a gun instead of an arm. Can move around, does some crazy shit after he beats other robots up. Ok. Now let’s take away anything remotely weapon related. Instead, the only “shot” he’s got left is the “hole in the ground” shot he got from Bear-Trap Man. Now we take him apart and sodder him onto Bomber-man, exorsize their souls, and have them possess a child. Now add time travel.

First of all, Let’s adress the title. Much like “Lee Trevino’s Fighting Golf,” Booby Kids is a big fat misnomer. There’s no breasts!!! There’s nothing even remotely resembling a breast. There’s fruit, which looks a bit like a breast, but no.

No, in fact the “Booby” in “Booby Kids” refers, instead to theBooby Traps That MegaMan/Bomberman/Possessed Child lays down to harm enemies. I know. It’s like running downstairs on christmas morning to find that santa has left you a snow shovel. Damn you, you jiggly present monster!!

But false advertising aside, Booby Kids is an interesting concept totally crushed by difficult gameplay, a complete lack of explination, and a growing frustration that will most likely lead to some small form of homicide on the player’s part.

The game is made up of several old ideas, but forms an interesting challenge: You walk around collecting fruit (blah) dressed like Megaman (uh huh) sometimes setting bombs (rip-off) travelling through time (crack) for no real reason other than you like it when people fall in holes. It can be a very strategic game – leaving holes behind you, blowing things up ahead of time, but mostly it’s a lot of falling in your own holes and cursing they day you were born.

So yeah, the concept’s kinda funny. However, as hinted above, The game is ass hard. You’ll die about 200 times before you finally figure out how the game works. The fact that the controls are hard to learn is no help. There’s also absolutely nothing at all that has to do with plot. You’re just sort of come into existance in the stone age and collect shit, then move on.

As for the Graphics and Sound, they were really basic. There was some lively music, but precious little of it. It’s like pancakes. All exciting at first but by the end you realize you’re playing Booby Kids.

Worst of all is the thought that out there somewhere, someone is probably killing themselves from Booby frustration RIGHT NOW.

What liked: Strategy Elements, the first five minutes of music

What disliked: Difficulty, fruit collecting, idea rip-off fest

What to expect: Falling in your own stupid holes that you just put down, a not-so-original-but-still-kind-of-cool-I-guess game.

What not to expect: Originality. Ease.

What's so different from this and other games of it's genre: It actually combines a lot of elements of other games. There’s not too much to set it apart, but it’s got it’s own kitschy sense of style and the idea of setting traps is kind of interesting.

Ratings on:

Control: 4 (hard to deal with. You end up in your own traps more often than you’d think. *Shudder*)

Graphics: 4 (I wish they changed a bit more, but I can live with it. Also lacks originality.)

Sound: 3 (Extra points for the Kooky music. Otherwise, who really cares?)

Style: 3 (a little for the traps, a little for the music, and that’s all folks.)

Difficulty: 9 (a very hard game. Most of the difficulty is figuring out how it works, but that’s really hard. It’s adamantium hard.)

12 am: 5 (Wow. This is hard. But I think I’ll be OK once I learn the system.)

1 am: 4 (I’m stuck. Where’s the FAQ?)

1:30 am: 2 (I’m beginning to think this game never existed in the first place.)

3 am: 1 (This game is all work and no reward. I’m tired of making people fall in holes for no apparent reason.)

4 am: -12 (“lalala! I AM kIng of SpAin!! I lIkez cats!! wahar!!”)

5 am: 0 (I’m cleaning up the bodies from temporary insanty induced by booby kids)

#1 reason why I hate this game: I am completely and absolutely stuck on the third stage and I forsee no way to complete the puzzle. Not only this, but there are absolutely no FAQs available on the net. None. Not even GameFAQs has one. All they have is a review that confirms what I’ve said above and reiterates the fact that this game sucks a tail pipe.

I think I broke my Freeohio