Roger Rabbit is here!
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is 1989 top-down / side scrolling video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Game Boy. It was made by Rare and published by LJN Toys for the NES and made/published by Capcom for Game Boy and is based on the popular Disney movie of the same name. The player controls Eddie Valiant while Roger Rabbit is controlled by Al-Computer. In Japan, Kemco also did a Who Framed Roger Rabbit game for The Famicom Disk System (which was later re-sprited and palette-swapped to The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle in USA).
Tropes:
- Adapted Out: Of the five Weasels in the movie, only Smart Ass, Stupid, and Psycho appear in the game - Greasy and Wheezy didn't make it.
- Cartoon Physics: It's explicable if gruesome that on the overworld map, getting hit by a car flattens Eddie. But why does getting bit by a snake also flatten him?
- Controllable Helplessness: If the Toon Patrol captures Roger, they tell the beginning of a joke, and Eddie must select the proper punchline in order to get them to laugh, releasing Roger. Choosing wrong makes Stupid whack Roger, costing a life.
- Cycle of Hurting: The shoes in Toon Town stop walking if they hit Eddie. If you're unlucky, they'll bounce Eddie straight up in the air so that he lands on them, and he'll just bounce until he runs out of health.
- Damage-Proof Vehicle: Benny the Cab lets you drive around the overworld without fear of being run over.
- Demoted to Extra: Baby Herman is one of the major characters in the movie. Here, he's reduced to a cameo.
- Dismantled Macguffin: Marvin Acme's Will is split into four pieces; you need all of them to confront Judge Doom at the end.
- Escort Mission: The entire game is functionally this for Roger. While he's generally immune to the hazards that would normally kill Eddie, Roger adds no gameplay utility and is just there to be a target for enemies that you have to keep him safe from. If birds snatch him or the weasels catch and successfully brain him with a bat, you lose a life.
- Gameplay Ally Immortality: Eddie can slug Roger around as much as he wants, but Roger just shakes it off due to being a Toon. He can also be run over by cars with no effect beyond a few seconds of lost time. Averted if the bird snatches Roger away from Eddie on the overworld, whereupon Eddie loses a life.
- Give Me Your Inventory Item: Various special items are guarded by creatures like rats, cats, and dogs that will One-Hit KO Eddie if he gets too close. Eddie can drop a different item to distract them.
- Hint System:
- In any given building, the random humans (and in Toon Town, the cartoon pigs) will tell you whether there's anything left in the building to find.
- Jessica Rabbit, Dolores, Baby Herman, and the snakes in the caves can be bribed in order to learn where a will fragment is.
- Infamously, searching a table in the Ink & Paint Club reveals a 1-800 number; calling it would lead to a recording of Jessica providing general hints about the game. The number has since been repurposed in the decades since, as The Angry Video Game Nerd discovered when he called it... and got a sex hotline instead!
- Infinite Supplies: Toontown contains a pair of "Magical Buildings" where Eddie can use an item with a limited supply, which instead spawns a new copy of itself to be picked up. Useful for stocking up on weapons before facing Doom.
- At the start of the game, leave Eddie's office, pick up a wallet from the sidewalk, go back in, and search the room until you find another one. Repeat these steps until you max out your supply.
- Luck-Based Mission: Item locations are completely random.
- One-Hit KO: In several places, black dogs, black cats, and red rats appear. They wander around randomly in a small area, and if Eddie gets too close, they charge him, and if they hit him, he loses a life.
- Password Save: The game uses the Password feature.
- Pig Man: Cartoon pig people show up as regular NPCs in Toon Town.
- Pixel Hunt: Searching drawers and desks for items is an essential point of the game, and your only clue as to which ones are stocked is if people inside request that you search. And worse, if you search an empty desk, you might wind up with a Zonk in the form of extra punchlines to scroll through.
- Punched Across the Room: What happens if you hit Roger with a fully charged punch.
- Soundtrack Dissonance:
- The Caves music switches halfway through the song from an appropriately eerie whistling tune to some upbeat jazz.
- Toon Town's music is a cheery, somewhat catchy somewhat annoying, cartoony-sounding song. However, everything about Toon Town is more difficult than LA - anvils fall faster than flowerpots, shoes that are more dangerous than the random animals appear, Psycho moves twice as fast and the random animals no longer stop appearing while he's on screen - which makes the cheerful music jarring.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can punch any person you like, from random NPCs to Roger himself. Doing so to the former will result in them refusing to help you when asked (at least until you switch to a different screen. Roger, meanwhile, will never object to being socked across the room.
- Visual Pun: A couple.
- One of the items you can find is a Heart Symbol. You give it to Dolores in order to get a hint for the location of a will fragment.
- There are snakes in caves that complain that their tails don't work. Give them a rattle (that is, a baby's rattle). They're rattlesnakes.
- Wackyland: Toontown, as you might expect. Pairs of shoes walk around, anvils fall on Eddie, and he can talk to anthropomorphic pigs.
