It's now time to play a licensed game that I thought would be at least halfway decent upon trying it out and playing through some of it. As you'll soon see, it ended up souring on me.
In this game, you're playing as Bonkers, just like in the cartoon. Your friends have apparently been kidnapped, and the only lead that Bonkers has is a note telling him to go to a wax museum. From here, you'll have to find clues and go to various locales before coming face-to-face with the culprit.
When you start the game, you can choose between two difficulties: Club and Hard. Hard just has you looking for more pickles in each level. That's it.
As for the Clue Page, this tells you what you'll be doing. There will be numerous food items you can pick up to refill your health with. Some food refills more more health than others, and pizza refills all the health. The things that look like orange slices are actually pickles, which are clues. When you pick up all the pickles in the current level, you go on to the next. Shields give you bonus points, and the ones with question marks on them also provide energy sometimes. Most importantly, there are extra lives, which can be hard to find unless you know where to look in any given level.
The Museum
Once you start the game, you'll be in the museum. Left and Right let you look around, while Down lets you duck. If you hold Down, you can look down, and if you hold Up, you can look up. Up and Down also let you go up and down stairs when standing in front of them. Button 1 lets you run when held, but you can only run for so long before Bonkers eventually starts walking again with no warning. Button 2 is the jump button.
The one thing you'll be doing in just about every level is looking for those orange pickles. You could just wander around the level aimlessly, or you can press Start to pause the game. When you do, you'll pull up your current score, as well as a picture of this clock-looking thing with a number above it. This
is a compass, and it tells you where the nearest pickle is. Be ready to do this constantly.
You have your health bar in the upper-left corner and your number of current lives in the upper right. If you lose all your health or fall down the bottomless pit at the bottom of the level, you'll lose a life. Lose all your lives and it's game over, and you're starting all the way back at the beginning...so be aware of where you're going and always look up and down when you need to. If you can't look in either direction, you're either at the very top or the very bottom of the stage. Watch your jumps!
Speaking of jumps, you'll need to move left or right for a second to get full momentum on your jumps. If you jump straight up and then try to move, you'll barely move an inch. Keep this in mind when fighting enemies.
If you jump on a chair or sofa, you'll bounce on it. Hold the jump button to jump higher. If you jump to the left or right onto one as opposed to straight up, you'll keep hopping in that direction until you're off the furniture.
Enemies in this stage include spiders that move up and down, men wrapped up to look like mummies (who end up becoming harmless after one hit), ghosts that walk towards you, and guys in hoods that peep in and out and regularly throw stuff at you when on-screen. Enemies can and will have the habit of re-spawning out of nowhere if you scroll their spawn point off the screen and get it back on, especially if you do it super quickly. This can cause some accidents as well as some frustration, especially since you have knockback when you get hit and you can get knocked down into a pit and lose a life.
Taking damage from enemies gives you the ever-familiar invincibility flash...and having the invincibility flash can also be a major pain, too, because you can't defeat other enemies (or bosses) and you can't pick up items (including pickles) while you're flashing. You'll have to wait for your invincibility to wear off before you can do the most important things again.
Banana peels make you slide. You can also slide if you double back while running, and if you run into any enemies while sliding, you'll actually defeat them.
The little guy with the nightstick doesn't hurt you; he's just there for show.
Ghosts' Gallery
The werewolves take two hits to defeat, and even though they will jump at you when you jump at them, you'll still be able to hit them.
Also, don't be surprised if you have to take a longer, roundabout way just to go in the direction of the nearest pickle. This will definitely happen in the later levels.
While I don't have this happen here, there are certain points in the levels where you can meet your friends. Sometimes they will leave food that you can refill your health with, while others can take you to a bonus area where you can just jump over mine carts and get bonus points.
Fright's Gallery
The hunchbacks take one hit to defeat, and they also throw projectiles at you. The skeletons also take one hit to defeat, and they roll their heads at you like bowling balls. The knights on tank treads also take one hit to defeat, and they crumble in hilarious fashion afterwards.
The bats just fly around; they don't hurt you.
You may notice the health bar and lives count hide behind foreground elements in the levels. This will happen in some of the levels.
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