Video Game / Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose!

A Tiny Toon Adventures Licensed Game by Konami, for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

This game features Buster Bunny in a side-scrolling adventure, with six action stages and five bonus rounds.

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Buster Busts Loose contains examples of:

• Animated Actors: The game is mostly set as a movie with the characters following a script, and after beating the final level, the characters are seen carrying the props away in the background.
• Athletic Arena Level: The fourth level, "Acme Looniversity Football" is the final part of a football game, based on the episode, "The Acme Bowl".
• Auto-Scrolling Level: There are several levels where the screen scrolls, and Buster has to keep up by dashing. These levels also require a lot of jumping, and given that the edge of the screen is fatal, the timing of the jumps have to be just right, otherwise, Buster will lose a life.
• Bait-and-Switch Boss: The boss of the Wild West level is set up as Montana Max, but the "boss" of the level is the train locomotive and its individual parts, and when you track Max to the front of the engine he's freaked out by how it's going haywire and escapes with Buster.
• Big Bad: Plucky is revealed to be Duck Vader in disguise in the final boss.
• Big Boo's Haunt: The third level takes place in Spook Mansion. The level begins with Buster seeking shelter from the rain in a haunted mansion. The enemies in the level consist of various monsters that appeared on the show, and the bosses are Dr. Gene Splicer and Melvin the Monster from the episode, "Hare Raising Night" (who are simply refferred to as "The Mad Scientist" and "Babs' friend" in the game, respectively).
• Bonus Stage/Gameplay Roulette: In between each level, the player is given a chance to win extra lives by playing a mini-game. The mini-game is determined by spinning the "Wheels O' Game", a wheel with faces of the show's characters on it, much like the Wheel O' Comedy from the episode of the same name. However, you can practice these mini-games by using the Elmyra Duff-Shirley McLoon-Calamity Coyote password.
• Boss Arena Urgency: During the battle with Dizzy Devil in the Acme Looniversity cafeteria, Dizzy's basic attack is spinning through the conveyor belts, which makes the task of feeding him to the point of making him fall asleep more challenging.
• Call-Back:
  • The introduction to the bonus rounds is based on "The Wheel O' Comedy".
  • "The Western Movie" level features the Coyote Kid and his henchmen from "High Toon" as enemies, as well as Silas Wonder from "Sawdust and Toonsil" as a mini-boss.
  • In the "Spook Mansion" level, the enemies include ghosts (From the "Return to the Acme Acres Zone" short, "Boo Ha Ha"), two-headed monsters (from the wraparounds of "Stuff That Goes Bump in the Night"), evil cakes (From the "You Asked For It, Part II" short, "Little Cake of Horrors"), and a vampire mini-boss (from the "Stuff that Goes Bump in the Night" short, "Fang You Very Much"). The bosses of the same level are Dr. Gene Splicer and Melvin the Monster from "Hare Raising Night".
  • The "Acme Looniversity Football" level is based on "The Acme Bowl".
  • The "Space Opera" level is based on "A Quack in the Quarks", and most of the enemies in that level are characters that appeared in that episode, such as the Stormtwoopers. Other enemies in the same level include the droids from the "Return to the Acme Acres Zone" short, "Real Kids Don't Eat Broccoli".
• Continuing is Painful: Every time you continue after running out of lives, you'll be pushed back to the beginning of the stage. Check Points only work when you have lives available.
• Corridor Cubbyhole Run: The "Space Opera" level has an auto-scrolling section in a space battle with ships in the background occasionally firing at the screen. Buster has to stand in front of blast shields to protect himself.
• Covers Always Lie: The American and European box art for the game depict Buster wearing yellow boxer shorts with carrots on them. He does not wear them at all in any point in the game. In fact, the only time he wears something other than his his red shirt in the game is in the "Acme Looniversity Football" level, wherein he is dressed in his football uniform.
• Difficulty by Region: The Japanese version has no Challenge mode, but allows you to use Password Saves and offers unlimited continuous plays even on Normal mode.
• Down to the Last Play: The "Acme Looniversity Football" level is the last few minutes of a football game, in which the player must score a touchdown to win.
• Easy-Mode Mockery: The game skips parts of the levels, the entirety of the "Buster's Sky-Jinks" level, and even the ending if you happen to play it on Children mode... and it's the only difficulty where you get passwords outside of the Japanese version. Your moves are also altered; in Children mode, your dash on its own will count as an attack, while on Normal or Challenge modes, you have to do a dashing leap or slide to avoid damage.
• Falling Chandelier of Doom: Every chandelier in the "The Western Movie" level falls as Buster passes them.
• Feed It a Bomb: The boss of the first level, "Acme Looniversity" is Dizzy Devil. In order to defeat him, Buster must feed him nine pieces of food so that Dizzy will have eaten enough and fall asleep.
• Foreshadowing: Duck Vader doesn't talk with the speech impediment that he had on the show. It's a hint that it's not really him, but Plucky playing the role.
• Game-Breaking Bug: Near the end of the train area, Buster has to dash forward off the train car to hit a conveniently placed ramp to get to the engine portion of the train just before he gets scrolled off screen and loses a life. If the player has customized the controls so the R button is set to something besides "dash", this becomes impossible since you lose control of Buster when you get to the end of the car and the game does the last part automatically as a Last-Second Showoff, which will fail if the R button is set to another function.
• Game-Over Man: Sweetie appears on the Game Over screen, tapping her foot impatiently.
• Goomba Stomp: Averted. Jumping on enemies hurts Buster, so his basic attack is a flip kick move that goes in an arch. This move can miss enemies at times, so Buster has to be standing in the right place for it to work.
• Gravity Screw: During the "Space Opera" level, there's a section where Buster must hit the switches to invert the gravity to get a giant cannonball to break through the ceiling and floor.
• Handcar Pursuit: The climax of the "The Western Movie" level has Montana Max and Buster escaping from an oncoming train on a handcar... which reaches 88 MPH.
• Heal Thyself: Silver Carrots refill one lost heart, and Gold Carrots refill all lost hearts.
• Hearts Are Health: If played on Children or Normal mode, the player starts out with three hearts in his/her health bar, and he/she can extend it to up to five by finding Crystal Carrots. Completing a level or continuing after running out of lives will reset the health bar back to three; and when playing on Challenge mode, the player starts each stage/continuous play with only one heart in his/her health bar.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • During the battle with Dr. Gene Splicer and Melvin the Monster in the "Spook Mansion" level, Melvin will toss lightbulbs and screwbolts at Buster. While the former breaks when Buster hits it, he can hit the latter back at Splicer's machine so they can gradually destroy it.
  • During the final battle with Duck Vader, Duck Vader will attempt to zap Buster with a laser. Buster must hit him to detach him from the laser, causing him to bounce around to screen and get zapped by the haywire laser several times to defeat him.
• Hypno Trinket: In the battle against them, Dr. Gene Splicer uses a mind control helmet on Melvin the Monster, much like he did in "Hare Raising Night". To free Melvin from it, Buster must destroy Splicer's machine.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Children (Easy), Normal, and Challenge (Hard).
• Law of 100: You get an extra life for every 100 stars you collect.
• Levels Take Flight: The fifth level, "Buster's Sky-Jinks", is built around this. First, Buster is sent up into the air on a giant balloon provided by Calamity. Then, he has to hop across some bubbles, provided by Hamton in a plane, as well as some more balloons. Eventually, he reaches a blimp which appears to be promoting the show the game is based upon, which he must ride while attacking some buzzards. The blimp eventually pops and Concord Condor airlifts Buster to the pinball temple, where the script for the next episode (leading to the final level) is. This level is entirely omitted from the Children mode.
• Locomotive Level: Much of the second half of the "The Western Movie" level takes place on a runaway train.
• The Maze: One of the bonus games is a maze-like game involving Babs Bunny at Elmyra's house, trying to rescue her friends, ^note Little Beeper, Calamity Coyote, Bookworm, Furrball, Concord Condor, and Fifi La Fume who are all trapped behind locked doors. For each friend she rescues, the player earns an extra life. The game is over if Babs rescues all her friends, runs out of time, or gets caught by Elmyra, Dizzy, or Arnold.
• Mean Character, Nice Actor: At the end of the game, during the Proscenium Reveal, Duck Vader is revealed to be a costumed Plucky, which is odd, as he is a completely different character in the "A Quack in the Quarks" episode.
• No Final Boss for You: Since bosses and parts of levels are cut out when played on the Children difficulty, this includes the final boss.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: Buster is downed in one hit if you play the game on Challenge mode, at least until you find Crystal Carrots.
  • One-Hit Kill: Falling into Bottomless Pits instantly downs Buster at all times.
• Password Save: The game has a password system that consists of three spaces for pictures of faces of characters from the show. Unfortunately for the American and European versions, it's only used in Children mode... although there are some special passwords that give you unlimited continuous plays for Normal and Challenge modes (American and European versions only) or let you choose a minigame to play directly instead of the roulette (also works with the Japanese version).
• Pinball Zone: At one point during the "Buster's Sky-Jinks" level, Buster reaches a pinball temple, which he must climb up to collect an important item Calamity Coyote left at the top. If Buster collects all the colored balls, then pinball flippers will appear, which can help him on his way up. When Buster does reach the top, the item is revealed to be the script for the next episode, which leads to the final level of the game.
• Point of No Continues: Defied. The American and European versions only allow you to continue a limited number of times (up to 5 on Normal mode, 3 on Challenge mode) before your game is truly over; but if you use the Plucky Duck-Babs Bunny-Bookworm password, that limitation will be gone until you give up.
• Produce Pelting: In the "The Western Movie" level, the Coyote Kid and his henchmen toss tomatoes at Buster.
• Recycled Soundtrack: The game re-arranges many pieces of BGM from the series, including the theme song, the music during the cutscenes (lifted from one of the title cards), the boss fight against Dizzy Devil (used in many episodes, but most notably "Rock 'n Roar"), the bonus game intro music (lifted from "The Weirdest Stories Ever Told" short, "Robin Hare"), the "Spook Mansion" theme (lifted from "The ACME Home Shopping Show" short, "I Was a Teenage Bunnysitter"), the first half of the "Buster's Sky-Jinks" level (lifted from "A Quack in the Quarks"), and the second half of the "Buster's Sky-Jinks" level (lifted from the "How Sweetie It Is" short, "Let's Do Lunch").
• Rise to the Challenge: At the very end of the "Buster's Sky-Jinks" level, after Buster successfully retrieves the next episode's script from the pinball fortress, the fortress begins to collapse, which leaves him to run up the walls to escape. Of course, the bottom of the screen is fatal.
• Save the Princess: Parodied in the prologue to the "Space Opera" level:
  Buster: I'll fight the evil empire army all by myself. While I'm doing that I'll also manage to save Princess Babs.
  (Babs Bunny walks on)
  Buster: Wait a minute, Princess Babs? You mean I have to rescue you again?!
  Babs: That's right.
  Buster: Well hurry up then. The show's getting ready to start.
  Babs: Okay. Time for me to get captured.
• School Setting Simulation: Stage 1 takes place in ACME Looniversity. In this level, Buster has to run through the school hallway while avoiding frogs, crabs, and Roderick Rat clones. Midway through the stage, Buster encounters Arnold the Pit Bull as a mini-boss in a darkened art room, and must defeat him in order to obtain the key to the cafeteria. In the cafeteria, Dizzy Devil serves as the end-of-level boss (which is skipped in the Children Mode), and to defeat him, Buster has to feed Dizzy nine total pieces of food so that he will fall asleep. Every so often, Dizzy will spin and break the conveyor belts, making feeding him more of a challenge.
• Shout-Out: The end of "The Western Movie" level has Buster and Montana Max riding on a handcar away from the runaway train. Once you get up to 88 MPH, they disappear in a trail of flames.
• Slide Attack: When played on Normal or Challenge modes, Buster must use this when he is running to defeat enemies.
• Smooch of Victory: After Buster beats the Final Boss, Babs gushes about how great he is then offers him one of these. Buster doesn't seem interested at all and Plucky intervenes to stop the whole thing.
• Space Zone: The sixth and final level, "Space Opera" takes place in space. and most of the enemies are characters that appeared in that episode, such as the Stormtwoopers. The final boss is Duck Vader, who attempts to zap Buster with a giant laser, which Buster must snatch from him and zap him with. At the end of the game, the stage is revealed to have been filmed in a studio, and Duck Vader is really a costumed Plucky.
• Take Cover!: A segment in Space Opera takes place in middle of a huge space battle, with perioidic gigantic screen-filling energy blasts that Buster must avoid by standing behind convenient walls that always seem to pop up whenever one is headed his way.
• Talking with Signs: While many of the characters almost always move their mouths when they speak, when Calamity Coyote had to speak in the prologue to the "Buster's Sky-jinks" level, his sprite merely held up a blank sign, but what he needs to say is displayed on the normal dialogue box. He also holds up a sign saying "Help me!" in Babs' bonus game instead of yelling it like the other characters, and pulls out another sign saying "Thank you!" when you rescue him instead of saying it like the other characters.
• Trash Landing: If you lose a life, Buster will sometimes fall into a dumpster.
• The Unfought: While most Tiny Toon Adventures video games have a final battle against Montana Max, not only is Montana Max not the final boss of this game (that honor goes to Duck Vader), there's no boss fight with him at all.
• Wall Crawl: Buster doesn't climb up walls, he runs up them.
• The Wild West: The second level, "The Western Movie", takes place in a western town, featuring The Coyote Kid (from the TV series episode, "High Toon") and his henchmen as enemies. Here, Montana Max is in the progress of robbing a safe, and the second half of the level takes place on a runaway train to chase after him.