TGWTG User Blogs

I'll be straightforward and blunt: I love the Looney Tunes. It's hard not to! There's a ton of recognizable characters, they've stood the test of time (you can watch a short today and you'll still laugh), and there's jokes for both kids AND adults. To put it simply, the Looney Tunes are classic animation at its best. Only Disney's animation can rival the Looney Tunes.

As long as I can remember, there's been video games based on the Looney Tunes (well, usually Bugs Bunny). There's been games like Bugs Bunny's Birthday Blowout, B-Ball, Loons, Taz: Escape From Mars, Space Race, etc.

Sound like quality games, right?

Yeeaaahhhh.....let's...not...talk..about those....

Well, there's three Looney Tunes games in particular that stick out in my memory. All three of them were on the Playstation and I used to play them to death. I am, of course, talking about Bugs Bunny Lost In Time, Bugs Bunny & Taz: Time Busters, and Sheep Raider.  Lets talk about these, shall we?

Bugs Bunny Lost In Time
 
Released: 1999

When I hear the words "Looney Tunes video game", the first thing that pops into my mind is definitely NOT "time travel epic." But I guess that's why I'm not a game programmer? Well, either way, apparently someone thought that there needed to be a game about Bugs Bunny travelling through time. Go figure.

When the game starts up you get a cutscene showing you that Bugs Bunny has taken the wrong turn at Albuquerque and has accidentally stumbled upon a time machine. It happens. He activates the time machine and is sent to 'Nowhere'. Once there, he meets Merlin (who strangely looks like the type of person you'd see wandering around the streets of San Francisco talking to himself). Merlin tells him that the only way for him to return home is to travel through several different time eras and collect enough clocks to open up a portal to the present day. It happens.

So, Bugs, instead of simply asking for a couple spare clocks that Merlin might have lying around, decides to go on a crazy adventure through time. Woo! Now onto the gameplay.

The game's levels follow a nonlinear path, meaning that you don't have to do each stage in a set order. After collection a certain amount of clocks/golden carrots, a new level or two pops up. It's completely up to the player how many clocks they collect in a level, although it's probably best that you get all you can.

Also, once you select a time era, you don't beat every level offered in that era right away. For example, the very first era you go to is the Stone Age. However, one of the levels in the Stone Age era isn't open until the end of the game.

Later on in the game, you'll start learning some new abilities for Bugs. You'll learn stuff like how to open secret doors, how to jump higher, etc. Once you learn these, you can go back to earlier levels and find new hidden areas that weren't possible to access during the first run-through. So, basically, the game manages to keep fresh.

Throughout the story, you'll meet (and have boss fights with) many Looney Tunes characters. All the voicework is well done and they even used old Mel Blanc recordings for Yosemite Sam! Awesome!

So, overall, this isn't the greatest game ever. I doubt anyone ever thought it would be. HOWEVER, it is a fun platformer and a cool experience for a Looney Tunes fan.

Bugs Bunny And Taz: Time Busters
 
Released: 2000

What is it with Looney Tunes games being about time travel? Did I miss something? Was this a common theme in the shorts? If I were in charge of making a Looney Tunes game, I'd just do what Mickey Mania did -- I'd make a platformer where all the levels are based off of the cartoons. Why is that so hard to do? Dammit, Bugs!

Alright, if you couldn't guess, this is the sequel to Lost In Time. In it, Granny is...some...master...of time...lady... and she hires Daffy Duck to come by and exterminate a mouse. K. Well, Daffy sees that she has this big magical time-gem thing, grabs onto it, and it teleported through time. It happens.

Bugs Bunny just happens to be coming by when this is happening and Granny asks him to help her. She asks him to take Taz (who is apparently her pet) and go through different time eras to find Daffy and bring back the time gem.

And how will you travel through these different time eras? By collecting gears of course! Apparently, when Daffy was being a jerk, he screwed up Granny's time machine and there are gears from it scattered throughout time.

In other words: gears replaced the clocks from Lost In Time.

So, yeah, it's pretty obvious that the basic gameplay is pretty much the same as Lost In Time. However, they added in the ability to switch off between Bugs and Taz, and each of them have their own unique abilities. As the game progresses, you learn new abilities for each character. Also, if you have a friend nearby, there's an option to do two-player co-op during the story mode. In fact, the second player can just jump in at any time. That feature kept me and my older brother entertained when we would be playing this together.

Even though not a lot of the gameplay has been changed, I prefer this game to Lost In Time. Why? It's more fun. There's more things to do. The worlds are bigger. There's more to explore. There's more interaction with Looney Tunes characters. There's more humor. It's basically just a bigger and better version of Lost In Time.

There's one thing that always seemed weird to me though. On the back of the game, it's advertised as "Join Bugs Bunny and Taz on their first ever adventure through time!" While it is true that it's their first adventure together, Bugs had already travelled through time before. Did he simply forget about the events of Lost In Time? Did he forget how big of a pain in the ass collecting clocks/gears can be? Or is he really just that nice and can't say no to doing Granny a favor?

Again, it's not the best video game ever, but I'm sure Looney Tunes fans will get a kick out of it. Hell, to this day I still bust it out and play it every once in a while. It's a pretty fun game.

Sheep Raider
 
Released: 2001

I'm so glad that I'm done talking about time travel. It felt like every other word I was using was either "time" or "DeLorean." Well, maybe not the second one, but you get the point.

No, this game actually isn't about Bugs Bunny going through time. In fact, it's not even about Bugs Bunny! Gasp! This game is actually based on the "Sam Sheepdog and Ralph Wolf" cartoons. You know -- the ones where the wolf that looks exactly like Wile E. Coyote tries to steal a sheep but always ends up getting his ass handed to him? Yeah, those cartoons.

In this game you control Ralph Wolf. Ralph Wolf E. Coyote to be exact. Basically, the point of the game is to keep stealing sheep from Sam Sheepdog's herd until he has no more left. Yeah, Ralph is kind of a jerk.

At first it's as easy as simply attracting a sheep away from the flock or getting past Sam unnoticed. But as the game goes on, the difficulty rightfully increases. This game gets pretty tricky too. There's one level that takes me literally an hour to do every time. And that's not counting the boss fight at the end of it, either!

There's also one level where the way you steal the sheep involves using a magic stopwatch to....travel...back...in...time.

...

.....

 ..........

WHAT THE HELL!?! I thought that playing this game would get me away from the time travelling plot of the last two! Why is it that each of these Looney Tunes games have to have something to do with time travel? Did the developers honestly sit back and say "Crazy animation and clever humor? No no no, we don't need that. What we need is some time travel! That'll really spice things up!"

Okay, all joking aside, this game's actually pretty fun. You get to use a selection of various ACME products -- robots, rockets, bungee cords... you know the drill. If you sit and play the first few levels, you might not be impressed. I'd recommend, though, playing through some of the later levels. Once the difficulty starts increasing, the game just gets more and more entertaining.

This game gets pretty weird towards the end though. If I remember correctly, once you've stolen all of Sam's sheep, you head home...only...to be abducted...by Marvin the Martian. He tells you to do something involving his aliens. I don't remember. It happens. You know? I don't think I've ever beaten this game before. I know for a fact that I've gotten to the last level....but I can't remember if I actually beat the last level or not. Damn!

If you're going to check out these games, don't go into them expecting some amazing works of art. If you do, you'll be severely disappointed. However, if you're interested in playing some fun platforming games while enjoying Looney Tunes humor and seeing plenty of familiar faces, then these games are for you.

But if you find yourself playing any one of these games and enjoying it? Take my word for it:

It happens.