Game #1288: Johnny Bazookatone

 To the jail-house rock with this one!

 So there I was, watching a video on the story of PS1 longboxes, and footage came up of a 2-D platformer I didn't even know existed. I googled something akin to 'Ps1 Purple hair Elvis 2D' or something like that, and somehow I found Johnny Bazookatone on the first result.  I ordered the game, and decided it'd be a nice quirky game to play come this Christmas. I've taken better decisions, I'll tell you that much.

 Well, booting up the game presents you with this bizarre overly-long intro that plays to a bangin' tune. I decided I was in for a good time. I was not. The game is a 2-D platformer in which you play as a purple haired Elvis look alike, and armed with a machine-gun you must... umm, the only way to know what the story is all about is to read the instruction booklet, but hey, the game has plenty of lengthy pre-rendered cutscenes between stages that... fail to convey any type of story. That said, while I usually dislike pre-rendered sprites, I do feel that the graphics in this game are very charming. 

 Well, the game is horrid, barely playable at all. You can jump and gun, a bit like Earthworm Jim, but you also have a charge attack that is useless unless you charge it for a few seconds... but no enemy ever gives you that much time to charge it. The run is super weird, you have to hold down a button, and upon first pressing the button, you will perform a weird twirly jump. In order to use keys you must suck them up with the O button, for whatever reason. On the other hand, I found gliding cute, because eventually you'll figure out that shooting downwards while jumping lets you slow down your descent, which is a pretty cool idea and feels nice to use.

 But the game is extremely hard and punishing, thus, completely unenjoyable. And it's not because it demands precision, but because it has all the problems a bad 2-D platforming game has. Plenty of times, it's impossible to figure out what's below you until you drop down. You can hold down Down to look down below, but oftentimes it won't help, so you'll just have to do the jump and hope there isn't an enemy or an obstacle below you. This makes the game dreadful. But then there's the fact that it's impossible to predict when enemies are coming from, you'll just be moving left to right and they'll just pop into existence before you understand what hit you. This problem is ever present. Sometimes, what can hurt you just doesn't make any sense, I somehow made it to stage 6, full of broken elevators, and I touched a plant that looked like a background element and it hurt me. And if you die midway through, it's back to the first stage. And the invincibility cheat won't save you from bottomless pits, and don't you dare judge me, even the Continue? guys went for cheats, because it's that bad.

 I didn't finish the game, I only went through the first six stages and that was enough, the game is terrible. Stage 3 was peak bad level design, for starters, it's the first level in which you are introduced to keys. I spent like 20 minutes going up and down the same four floors not knowing how to open doors, until I looked up a video. Turns out there were keys waiting to be picked up... behind metallic grate walls that obscured them. It was even hard to notice in the video that there was a key spinning behind it. Why would they do this? It's even worse, because the level goes on forever, and you have to go up and down finding doors to open, and it's so poorly designed that a mistimed jump can drop you down several floors because screw you.

 Well... Christmas is ruined. Johnny Bazookatone was a horrible way to start this Christmas, so, hopefully, it's not the last game I play this year. There's got to be something good to finish the year with, and this ain't it.

 1.0