Roger Rabbit/The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle (Famicom Disk System/NES Review)

Roger Rabbit
aka The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle
Platform: Famicom Disk System
Developed by Kemco
First Released February 16, 1989
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Two straight Kemco games. Total coincidence, as I’m going in chronological order.

There’s going to be a LOT of games in the “Crazy Castle” series reviewed here over the coming days, folks. Like, there’s five more to go after this. This is the first of the franchise, released in the US with Bugs Bunny instead of Roger Rabbit because LJN owned the Roger Rabbit license in the United States. I think LJN would have been better off licensing this game, but that probably wasn’t an option. Kemco wanted to establish themselves as a player in the US market. Their North American NES lineup up to this point consisted of three games, two of which were mediocre: a port of PC mainstay Spy vs. Spy, along with the Superman NES game that’s among the worst games ever made. A third game, Desert Commander, was critically well-received but wasn’t exactly an on-trend genre. The port of graphic adventure Shadowgate would release a month after Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle came out in the US, but let’s face it: this was Kemco’s best game up to this point, and they knew it. If they were going to break through in the US, this was going to be the one that did it.

The controls are so stiff that it feels like rigor mortis has settled-in.

And I really like Roger Rabbit. It’s like an easier but more fun and exciting version of Lode Runner. You have to navigate a 2D maze and collect hearts (or carrots if you’re Bugs Bunny) while avoiding a variety of enemies. What makes the game work is the enemies have fixed-behavior and attack patterns similar to the ghosts in Pac-Man. While all but one of them will give chase to you if they end up on the same floor as you, the penguin (Daffy Duck) never uses the doors, stairs, or pipes and will keep walking until he hits a wall, then reverses direction. Judge Doom (Wile E. Coyote) and the bouncer gorilla (Yosemite Sam) also skips the doors/stairs/pipes, but they’ll directly chase you. The pink weasel (Sylvester) will walk in a straight line until they reach a stair, door, or pipe, and they’ll ALWAYS take it, though they can only move upwards, never down (except via falling off a ledge). He’ll also stop moving if he reaches a wall and you’re not moving. The blue weasel (Sylvester again) repeats the “only can go up” part, but he’ll directly chase you, like Judge Doom. Finally, the green weasel (yep, Sylvester) is a wildcard because he can’t be manipulated into following you.

If not for the controls, I think I’d rank this very high on the list of NES games I’ve played. But, man, those controls.. oof. Pretty awful.

To defend yourself, there’s a variety of cartoonish gags. There’s safes, anvils, and boxes that you can drop on enemies from higher ledges. There’s a boxing glove that acts as a projectile, and finally invisible ink, which is functionally a star in a Mario game and grants you invincibility. The combat is satisfying, but it’s the level design that carries the day. There’s sixty stages and it just never gets boring, especially when the game throws in pipe mazes or hazards like the skulls that you can’t walk into. Besides the controls, my biggest problem with Roger Rabbit is the difficulty scaling is non-existent. Hard levels will immediately be followed by several that are cakewalks. But, even cinchy stages will display some truly imaginative designs. Even ones that feel “gimmicky” for lack of a better term are a delight to explore, and grabbing that last heart always put a smile on my face.

When you think they’ve stretched the game to its creative limits, it keeps pulling out the surprises, like having entirely vertically-stacked levels. I loved Roger Rabbit. Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle? Well..

Oh, it gets frustrating. The controls are so sluggish. The game has some of the largest spaces for grid-based movement I’ve seen. This is especially frustrating when judging whether or not you’re about to walk off the edge of a platform. While it’s not fatal.. unless an enemy is below you.. you might have to redo a lot of progress if you accidentally walk too far. I also didn’t love how the scrolling was handled. While this is a close cousin to Lode Runner, one thing I like about that game is you are shown the whole level before the action starts. That’s not the case here, and a lot of the time, you have to move around blindly, not sure of where the hearts are. Oh, and sometimes the enemies feel like they’re just plain puppy-guarding areas. It’s why I was conservative with my boxing gloves, since they can only be fired a single time. Despite all the problems, Roger Rabbit is one of the most underrated games on the Famicom Disk System. I couldn’t understand why the NES version wasn’t a major hit.

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Then, I played Crazy Castle, and wow. Yea, good lord, I understand now. Besides the graphics, there is one major noticeable difference between Roger Rabbit and Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle that makes all the difference in the world. The US version has much slower enemies than the FDS original. I have no idea why Kemco made this adjustment, since it’s not like Roger Rabbit was impossibly difficult.. or difficult at all, really. Since you get a 1up after every stage AND there’s passwords that make continuing a cinch, there really was no benefit to universally nerfing the enemies like they did. I thought maybe they would speed up as you went along, but that’s not the case either. It’s completely nonsensical.

Nerfing the enemies for the US market is insane. Some games, the changes make sense. This time around, they nerfed enemies in a game that had already leaned slightly on the easy side of the puzzle genre. It’s baffling, folks. I have no answer for you, but I think the decision cost the game dearly.

The slowing down of the enemies removes the majority of the excitement from the game. The tension just isn’t there anymore. Scratching out a comfortable distance between YOU and THEM is fish in a barrel. Also, this move introduces new problems. Since Bugs still moves at the same speed and the enemies still have the same movement logic, the now arthritic Looney Tunes tend to cluster-up more, which makes the puppy-guarding situation worse. “Wait, wouldn’t that add to the difficulty?” Not really, because you can still “tempt” them away from the area, which is how I dealt with the problem if I didn’t have a boxing glove. Only now, there’s no tension in doing so. You know you’re going to outrun them. If anything, it forces you to play the game at a much, much slower pace.

I’m going to guess the odds on Roger Rabbit ever being re-released again are roughly the same as me spontaneously developing super powers. So, Kemco, if you’re listening: on the off-off-off chance you get the rights to re-release Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle ever again, PLEASE restore the original enemy speed. Don’t be stupid. Again, I mean.

It’s unfathomable. The same game with the same levels, the same combat, and the same enemies is significantly less fun because of that one brainless change that never stood to benefit anyone. I suspect we might soon see a Crazy Castle compilation with the full series released. What IP that collection will utilize I’m not entirely sure of, but I do know that the version that came out on the Famicom Disk System is one of the best 8-bit puzzlers on a Nintendo platform. The NES version was reduced to “oh yea, I remember that game” status when it should be held up as legendary. It’s a design choice so damaging it should be taught in design school.
Verdict: YES! to Roger Rabbit, NO! to Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle