The Adventures of Bayou Billy

Though it's been said often enough, the phrase, "Jack of all trades; master of none," has never really become a cliché, just for the sheer fact that it's so often true. For its time, The Adventures of Bayou Billy must have seemed like a very ambitious game, and coming from the venerable Konami, one would have had plenty of reason to expect good things from the game. Konami would eventually have a number of strong belt scrollers on their resume, and their overall track record was generally strong. Unfortunately, though, Bayou Billy was not one of my childhood favorites, and time has not done it any favors, either.

The premise of Bayou Billy, or Mad City as it was known in Japan, is that the eponymous Billy's girlfriend has been kidnapped by Cajun gangsters, and it's up to him to rescue her. The atypical setting in Louisiana does help it to stand out a bit from other brawlers, and the opening of this tale is relayed through a promising Ninja Gaiden [忍者龍剣伝 [NES]] style cut scene. It's a pretty typical premise, and sadly, it doesn't go into any more depth than how I just described it with very little plot development once the initial exposition is out of the way. The other characters have names, but who really cares? The story is just an excuse to move between set pieces.

Once the stage has been set, the game proceeds to a beat 'em up section, which is the main mode of play. At a glance, you'd be forgiven for thinking that you were playing a "Double Dragon" title, as outside of Billy's Crocodile Dundee-inspired character design and a few crocodiles, it closely follows the formula of the more popular game, with some of the enemies even seeming to be direct rips on the Lee brothers. The swamp itself even bears a passing resemblance to Stage III from Double Dragon. Unfortunately, despite the attention to detail in the looks, the game does not play nearly as well as its obvious inspiration, with the action being much more straightforward, limited to just punches and kicks. While that does make the combat somewhat boring, the bigger issue is that it's unfairly difficult. In Double Dragon, landing the first hit would, with some exceptions, render an enemy vulnerable, but this is not the case in Bayou Billy. The fights here usually devolve into simple wars of attrition, and progression can more often be attributed to luck than skill.

If Bayou Billy were just a beat 'em up, then it would be decidedly mediocre. However, it also features two other gameplay modes. Today, it's not so rare for games to cross genres, but this was a novel idea at the time. Titles like Contra [魂斗羅] may have changed the perspective of the action, but Bayou Billy almost feels like three games in one, and the title screen even lets you access any of the three modes without actually playing the game. The first excursion from the beat 'em up portion of the game is a light gun mode, and this was undoubtedly the best style of play that Konami offered here. Truthfully, there isn't a whole lot that would make this mode stand out from others. Various enemies run around a scrolling screen and various power-ups will be left in their wake. It's a tried and true effort, but it is fun, which is more than can be said for the other modes.

The other mode is a driving mode along the lines of Rad Racer [ハイウェイスター] with some combat elements mixed in. Unfortunately, like the beat 'em up sections, it feels incredibly difficult with both obstacles in the road and attacks from the sky to contend with, not to mention that you have to stay on the winding roads, all of which combines to overwhelm the player. Later stages in the game return to the beat 'em up style, but those sections suffer from much the same problems as the first beat 'em up section, only really differing in their backdrop. Overall, while the shooting sections are decent, neither the beat 'em up nor the driving sections were a good time upon release, and it's hard to imagine too many people enjoying them now..

What then does that leave that might provide the least bit of redemption to Bayou Billy? Well, it does have an incredible soundtrack. This was one of the first games that I can remember playing that had a sound test mode, and Konami had every right to be proud of this soundtrack. While it doesn't have a ton of variety, the tunes that are here more than live up to the pedigree set by earlier titles like Castlevania, particularly the main theme, which is heard in both the beat 'em up sections and in the game's opening. Between the disco beat and the wah-wah guitar, Konami really pushed the NES's sound chip to its limits with this track. The game was also a bit ahead of the curb in its use of digitized voices. They sound silly now, but it was miles ahead of most other digitized speech up to this point, further proving that Konami's sound programmers were wizards. While nothing else on the soundtrack is quite as spectacular as this time, the soundtrack is really much too good for the game it was featured in.

As fond as I am of the sound design and music in this game, there's no getting around that The Adventures of Bayou Billy just isn't very good. If one needs any proof that Konami actually could do wrong, you need not look further. Despite, sounding good on paper, Konami bit off more than they could chew, and the execution of the game left a lot to be desired. You end up wondering if they stitched together some unrelated bits of play to pad out the beat 'em up or if they were just crazy enough to try all their whims at once. In either case, it just doesn't seem to work. Unless you are some kind of NES completionist, this is one adventure that you should avoid.