Dear Reader:
Captain N - How's Bayou
Can you guys believe that we have exhausted all the episodes of The Legend of Zelda cartoon that were on YouTube?! I can hardly believe it either. That doesn’t matter though, we have plenty of Captain N episodes to take care of us! This morning’s episode is entitled How’s Bayou. This episode is quite a flashback for us gamers that were around from the start of the NES days. The episode features Bayou Billy, from the NES game, The Adventures of Bayou Billy. Just incase you are unfamiliar, check an explanation from the wiki page below.
The Adventures of Bayou Billy is a video game released in 1989 by Konami for the NES. It was released in Japan as Mad City in 1988.
It consists of three distinct playing styles used over 9 levels: shooting (optionally allowing the use of a Zapper), a side-scrolling beat ‘em up, and a third-person driving section. Unfortunately, all three modes (especially the side-scroller) were not well executed, and the game remained unpopular among gamers, despite Konami’s record of hit titles on the NES. During its release, Konami hyped the game, including a commercial with a live actor playing Bayou Billy, and went as far to sign a deal with Archie Comics. Part of the game’s unpopularity was due to a rather high difficulty level, making the game very hard to beat. Strangely, the Japanese release featured a much better balanced difficulty.
The box art for the original Japanese release featured a hero who looked a lot like Paul Hogan, star of the Crocodile Dundee movies. The American box art is redrawn, likely to avoid a lawsuit. The plot of the hero rescuing a kidnapped girlfriend from a mobster is also similar to that of Crocodile Dundee II.
That’s enough blabbing from me. Enjoy the Saturday morning cartoon guys. I will be back after some (beauty) sleep with whatever news the weekend brings us.