Summary
Deceptively simple platformer that will have you hooked!
The Good
Konami's Tiny Toon Adventures games are all brilliantly pulled off adding something a little different each time to the platform genre. In Buster Busts Loose! you take on the role of, you guessed it, Buster Bunny through a bunch of completely unrelated events which are narrated by Buster and Babs before each stage in a humourous little cut-scene. Gameplay wise Buster controls well, he is responsive and his jump is nice and springy. There are three moves you can pull off; the basic jump, a dropkick (which looks more like a bicycle kick) and Busters Dash technique which you can use to kill enemies and solve puzzles which normally involve you running up a wall and jumping to another one etc.
As I mentioned before each level is COMPLETELY different, you start in Acme Looniversity and then move on to the Western movie stage and then a haunted mansion in the middle of a forest before joining in a game of Football against a rival team of identical ducks. After each stage you get to spin a wheel with pictures of most of the main characters on it, whatever face the wheel lands on is the mini-game you get to play. My personal favourite is Furballs Championship Squash which features a really cool reflection effect off the polished hardwood floor.
The Bad
The first couple of levels are snoringly easy and then all of a sudden the difficulty level is ramped up during the Mansion stage in which you are forced to negotiate some taxing jumps, after a bit of practice these jumps become easy however it sort of hits you with this difficulty spike all of a sudden.
Occasionally I found that when I spun the mini game wheel it would repeatedly land on the same game which gets irritating after a while.
The music is stock, basic cartoon background music and I found the Western and Football game tracks to be excruciatingly annoying.
The Bottom Line
Buster Busts Loose may sound stupid but it is a deceptively simple platformer from the platforming specialist; Konami. The game is bright, colorful, addictive and utterly playable, I personally love the inclusion of the mini games between stages. I guarantee that you will enjoy this game, it is definitely one of the better platformers for the SNES. The game however is a tad short so don't be disappointed when all of a sudden it is over :P.
