It's new to me: Bucky O'Hare

A late-life NES licensed game, made in part by future Treasure developers at Konami.

This column is “It’s new to me,” in which I’ll play a game I’ve never played before — of which there are still many despite my habits — and then write up my thoughts on the title, hopefully while doing existing fans justice. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

Bucky O’Hare was a comic book series turned television show, which, being the 80s and 90s, also meant that video game adaptations were a guarantee. The protagonist of the series, is, of course, Bucky O’Hare, a green space-faring hare who captains the crew of the ship the Righteous Indignation. That crew includes four other members, who aren’t all animals despite being part of the United Animal Federation: in addition to the cat Jenny and the duck, Deadeye, there’s also Willy the human and an android named Blinky. They fight against the Toad Empire, which, you guessed it, is primarily made up of toads. Expansionist, imperialistic toads.

With the show Bucky O’Hare and the Toad Wars debuting in 1991, Konami developed and published two different licensed video games based on the series: one in the arcades, and one for the NES. The arcade one was a multiplayer beat ‘em up, while the NES edition was more of an action-oriented platformer. It’s a single-player experience, but still manages to include Bucky’s whole crew thanks to the gameplay decisions it made.

While it’s a solid enough game in its own right, what I previously knew Bucky O’Hare for was that some of the developers who would eventually end up forming Treasure worked on it before leaving Konami. In fact, the director, programmer, and designer of Bucky O’Hare was Masato Magaewa, who not only founded Treasure, but is its president. Given Treasure has always had a smaller roster of developers, being president didn’t keep Magaewa from also programming on games like 1997’s Mischief Makers.

Image credit: MobyGames

He isn’t the only future Treasure member to have worked on Bucky O’Hare, either, as one of the game’s graphic designers, Kaname Shindoh, worked on quite a bit of the company’s 90s output, and two of the developers listed under “Special Thanks” for Bucky O’Hare — Kōichi Kimura, listed as “K. Kimura” in the credits, and Hideyuki Suganami, as “H. Suganami” — were also involved in some way. Kimura worked on quite a few Treasure games up through 2003 in a variety of roles (art, director, stage design), with his final job with the company that of director of Wario World, and Suganami also filled a variety of roles, such as the Main Programmer on Alien Soldier, script writer for Mischief Makers, and programming enemies for classics like Gunstar Heroes and Sin and Punishment.

Bucky O’Hare doesn’t feel much like a Treasure game, however, which makes sense: it’s not! It’s a Konami game, and a licensed one at that, which means there were two different sets of rules and restrictions that the game was developed under. Nothing as wild or inventive as Gunstar Heroes was ever going to come out of this, Bucky O’Hare wasn’t going to be in the business of subverting genres: it was just meant to capitalize on existing franchise popularity with a quality game, in the same vein as something like Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose! on the SNES (another Konami licensed title which would release in Japan in the same year as Bucky O’Hare). Buster Busts Loose! is just a good, solid game that doesn’t besmirch the franchise it’s licensing nor video games as a medium. Bucky O’Hare is similar, though, there are some difficulty spikes that do remind you it’s got a little bit of that “Nintendo Hard” NES quality to it, despite releasing at the tail-end of that system’s life.

Bucky O’Hare begins with the crew of the Righteous Indignation, Bucky aside, being kidnapped and separated by the Toad Empire. One crew member is on each of the four planets in the game — the Green, Blue, Red, and Yellow planets, not the most creative of naming conventions there — and you can tackle them in any order to rescue them. Well, mostly. To break the ice blocks on the blue planet, you need to have rescued Blinky the android, but other than that the order is up to you.

Each of the five characters has their own way of firing their weapon, and a power to charge up that will help you traverse the various levels. Bucky O’Hare has a pretty standard blaster that fires a single shot in a straight line. Blinky’s shot works on an arc, which makes it useful for hitting enemies hiding on the other side of cover or a platform. Deadeye has a spread shot that fires three bullets at once, with the top and bottom ones fanning out, while Willy and Jenny both have beam weapons. As you can switch between characters just by pressing the Select button, you can adapt to whatever situation is in front of you. Got some flying enemies to deal with, so you don’t want to jump and shoot and risk taking damage from them? Switch to Deadeye. Got a few enemies to take care of at once? Willy’s beam can be charged up, and will pass through multiple foes.

As for the powers — Willy’s charge beam being his — they’re more often than not for getting around. Bucky’s charge jump lets him reach much higher points than his standard one. Blinky has a jetpack. Deadeye can climb walls. Jenny has an energy ball that you can control. Like with the weapons, these are all contextually appropriate tools, often coming down to comfort level. Maybe you can reach the same destination with the high jump or the jetpack, but which one you feel better about using can make a difference.

While health is shared among your group, and picking up a health upgrade increases the bar for everyone, the power gauge is not shared. Those you are going to have to acquire with whichever character you want to receive the upgrade, but they’re also numerous, and not particularly hidden. You might need to make some skill jumps, or platform with the help of some charge powers to get to them, but they’re regularly in plain sight.

Generally, Bucky O’Hare is an easy play. Satisfying, but easy. You have plenty of health to the point you won’t need all the health items you find because you’ll already be sitting on plenty of it. That you can adjust to basically any situation by switching between crew members means you can tackle everything in an ideal manner. There is difficulty to be found, though, and it’s in avoiding the instant deaths. The many, many instant deaths.

Fall in a hole? Doesn’t matter how much health you have, you’re dead. Lava? Dead. Accidentally break the ice block you were standing on and fall into the void, even though it looks like there is still ground beneath you? Dead! Hit by a very large rock? Oh you know you’re dead. Bucky O’Hare is loaded with instant death opportunities, including in boss fights, and while enemies don’t hit you very hard, they do interrupt your movement when they shoot you or hit you, meaning you’ll plummet to your doom if you happen to be over a hole or whatever. If you don’t have the patience for that sort of thing, especially when the game is otherwise on the simple side as far as difficulty goes, then Bucky O’Hare won’t be for you.

On the bright side, extra lives are plentiful, and when you do get a game over and choose to continue, those continues are infinite in number, and you start not at the beginning of the level you were in, but at the start of whatever act within the level you were on — each of the game’s levels is broken up into acts, which basically just means “you exited a room and entered a new one.” They serve as checkpoints, even after a game over. There is a downside to using a continue, though, which is that your health and power upgrades will reset, so you’ll have to find those again. Hey, there had to be some kind of punishment in place besides just your score resetting. You can jump back in where you left off with a password, as well, if dying a dozen times in a row because lava keeps catching up to you is negatively impacting your mood.

Image credit: MobyGames

In the fifth stage, you travel with your crew to the Toads’ Magma Tanker, where you are once again separated: Bucky and Blinky are under your control, but you must rescue the other crew members, again, before wrapping up the level and the game. This level is understandably longer than the others, which were never very long, just packed. You can get through Bucky O’Hare in one sitting, if you don’t get annoyed too much at the instant deaths, but at least there’s quite a bit of variety in the levels and level design, so it doesn’t feel too samey in that hour-plus.

Critical reception of Bucky O’Hare was a bit mixed at the time and remains mixed into the present. Everyone agrees that it looks good, that the fast-paced action is a positive, and enjoys the way that you can cycle among your crew to tackle obstacles the way you want to. The instant death difficulty was a real point of contention, though, as some simply shrugged in a “that’s the way things are” manner, or praised the difficulty spikes as being challenges to overcome, while others lamented the uneven design of those sections, or that they came attached to a title that was, otherwise, a cakewalk. I’m a little annoyed at the instadeath design, as it can be frustrating to deal with, but extra lives are plentiful enough that it’s not a game-breaking issues. If Bucky O’Hare were any longer than it were, I might feel differently, but it’s a brisk play despite the instadeath interruptions, so it’s easy enough to shrug and move on while noting that not everyone might be willing to do so.

Not everyone feels the same about game design, so this is a situation where I’m not sure any of the critics were “wrong” with their assessment. Bucky O’Hare has its issues, and whether those issues outweigh its positives is very much up to your tastes and your patience. Is the game worth it in spite of its problems? That’s for you to decide, and you alone.

Not that you can without emulating it, since Bucky O’Hare isn’t available anywhere. At least since it’s a licensed game that’s not necessarily for the normal reasons Konami buries something, and more to do with the fact that there isn’t a very vocal and large Bucky O’Hare contingent around demanding access to the game once more.

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