I've seen this game so often on TASVideos that I thought giving it a try and playing it for the Internet would be a swell idea.
Spoiler alert: NOPE!
This game is based on Tom and Jerry: The Movie from 1993. The 8-bit Sega versions on Master System and Game Gear were actually called "The Movie," but they were not based on the movie, and were named such just to get more people to buy the game. After that, the movie tanked. The Game Boy and Sega Genesis versions were released after this happened. The movie was so bad that they had to change the subtitle from "The Movie" to "Frantic Antics" to - whaddya know - get more people to buy the game, this time without being reminded of the movie.
One-player mode alternates between characters when necessary, while two-player mode allows Player 1 to be Tom and Player 2 to be Jerry on the same screen. Two-player mode is a lot more chaotic, but I sadly won't be able to play that, so one-player mode it is.
The Street
Get back home! But watch out for Spike!
Left and Right let you move left and right, while Down ducks. A lets you run when held, B lets you jump and C lets you throw certain objects that can be used as weapons. If you don't have any weapons, you have to press Down while moving to perform a rolling attack, as jumping on enemies does not work and also damages you. You're going to perform the rolling attack a lot, and I'm just going to get it out of the way now: the attack absolutely sucks, and I'm going to explain why later.
At the bottom is the HUD. You have your current amount of lives, followed by the current amount of time and energy, followed by the heart that indicates the current amount of lives you have. Tom picks up fish, while Jerry picks up cheese. The amount you have will be noted at the bottom of the screen. If you pick up 100, you'll get an extra life. Also, picking up the fish or the cheese will net you a slight amount of energy, but if you're getting hit a lot, it doesn't always help. If you pick up a big fish or big cheese, you'll get a lot more health, and you'll add to that collectibles total by ten. Don't expect to find those often, though.
You'll be seeing a lot of the rat enemies carrying shotguns, commandeering mopeds or riding tricycles. Other enemies include grandmothers who shoot their false teeth at you and fire hydrants that spray water at you.
Footballs can be thrown as weapon at enemies. Just remember that you only have a limited amount of them if you grab one.
If you lose a life, either by falling into a pit, running out of time or losing all your health, you'll get a nifty animation of Tom or Jerry becoming an angel and flying upwards. You also get sent back to the beginning of the level, since the game doesn't believe in checkpoints. This makes the later levels even tougher than they should be.
You'll see the dog near the end, and you can tell it is there just from the white picket fence. Make a running jump over Spike the Dog - who doesn't even look like Spike from the cartoons - to get to the end of the level.
Press Start to get past the end of level message.
Living Room
Find Jerry before the house falls down!
The owners of the house have moved and left Tom and Jerry behind, and now the house is strangely set for demolition for whatever reason. The wrecking balls will instantly kill you if they hit you, so you'll need to jump over them.
Interestingly, the falling debris does not damage you, and is just there for show.
Enemies include bowling balls, birds flying around, falling chandeliers, falling pots, TV sets that explode, angry vacuum cleaners. The falling debris actually does not hurt you.
The cookie pieces will give you an extra life if you collect four pieces in a level. The hearts will also give you extra lives.
You can slide down the bannisters by jumping on them, but watch out for enemies. Couches can launch you into the air if you jump on them.
There are some walls that you can jump through to find hidden power-ups.
Some of the shelves break when you land on them.
The light bulbs are the throwable objects for this level, although they can be hard to notice
Sometimes, when you pick things up, you might get two of that thing instead of one every so often. This happens completely at random, and there is no explanation as to why except for a lack of quality control. As a matter of fact, I end up getting two lives from collecting the heart in the same place part of the time, which is interesting, because I should not have been getting such a net gain while dying so many times in this stage.
Speaking of a lack of quality control, sometimes when you roll into an enemy or a hazard that can be destroyed, you can sometimes lose more energy from attacking an enemy with a rolling attack than just by running into them, and if you don't have enough energy, you die. The game has weird collision detection that is so bad that it causes you to get two of an item and also causes cheap deaths from out of nowhere. Because of that, the rolling attack is complete garbage and the game makes it so that doing it is a gamble for basically no reason, which makes it all the more surprising that I beat this game for the Internet. Jesus Christ.
Finally, you'll reach Jerry, and you'll head to The Alley.
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