yamamanama (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
yamamanama) wrote2024-12-31 06:00 pm
yamamanama) wrote2024-12-31 06:00 pm
Wacky Races
78 days until the vernal equinox
Wacky Races, is, despite the name, not a racing game, although there exists an unreleased Wacky Races racing game for the Sega Genesis.
Wacky Races is a relatively obscure show from the age of The Flintstones, The Jetsons, and Scooby-Doo, with seventeen episodes and two spinoffs, one of which people call “Stop that Pigeon” because it’s repeated so often in the theme song but in actuality is called Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines. I guess it has a cult folloiwng in Japan.
The other spinoff is the Perils of Penelope Pitstop. Dick Dastardly and Muttley do not show up in that. Their suspiciously similar substitute is Sylvester Sneekly, who wants Penelope Pitstop's massive fortune.
The other racers scroll by one by one but whatever, we'll see them as we play the game.
Drat and double drat!
Hey, it's a sneil.
Muttley's basic attack is a chomp.
The only racing you'll be doing in this game is against the timer, which is rather generous.
Audrey II jumps around.
Someone described at Widget but good. On one hand, the movement is nowhere as stiff as Widget. On the other hand, about the only thing Widget and Wacky Races have in common is their graphical style and the fact that they’re platformers made by Atlus. It is a good game, if on the easy side.
Okay, I guess picking up the bones allows you to exchange them for powerups or heart increases. Six hearts is the maximum.
I don’t know if the bombs do more damage than the bark but I do know that the bombs arc, have a delay, and can’t go through walls while the bark can.
The third powerup is a hover ability, a lot like Mario's raccoon tail.
Bomb and Sonic Bark can't be used at the same time.
That's no ordinary rabbit!
Audrey III spits bullets at you. That's what you get for not feeding him all night long.
Heart increases also give you all your health back.
The chess pieces only move when you move.
In the second phase, just move away from him because he’ll jump over you and then dodge his projectile.
I dug up a character list and a Nintendo Power issue and the bosses are all named in that. This is Big Gruesome.
You get to keep all your health and powerups when you beat the level.
Quicksand isn’t usually found in the desert in real life but it’s kind of a video game trope at this point. There are sarlaccs in the quicksand.
Armadillos aren’t found in the Sahara usually. I thought they were giant shrimp at first. There’s a sprite of them standing up but in the game they’re always rolling.
Jumping on cactuses does hurt.
This was definitely inspired by Mario 3. They all are.
Pharaoh heads shoot bullets at you.
The floating statue heads can’t be stood on.
There are 100 ton weights that fall down from the sky that will temporarily smush Muttley to half-size and render him unable to attack.
We're back outside now and the crabs are red.
This is Sergeant Blast and Private Meekley.
The bosses are relatively hard compared to the stage. All the boss arenas include one bone so you can have a weapon if you die. You can try to enter the boss fight with three bones, grab the fourth one and save it for a health up. But that requires you to know in advance.
To beat him, just hide under the sinky sand. You may not be able to see but you can’t tank the hits (pun intended)
A lot of the enemies have the pattern of "run back and forth," "move in a sine wave" or
The gorillas throw boulders instead of barrels, like they're actually just Overseer Domaroth in disguise.
There exist sprites of the snakes biting, which is pointless because they all deal collision damage, or maybe it's jumping.
I wrote in my notes, "the spiky guy is impervious to your weapons" but in retrospect, I think I'm talking about a different spiky guy. These guys may or may not be impervious to your weapons but you can ignore them.
And now, despite being in southern Africa, we've entered a temperate deciduous forest.
Either this is a misplaced gibbon or a misplaced wooly monkey.
The spiky guy is impervious to your weapons.
For whatever reason, you go through another pyramid before you reach the boss.
Ruffus Ruffcut (in the show, he’s Canadian) and Sawtooth, his faithful beaver companion (see, he’s Canadian)
That's the life of Muttley.
You even get to keep your upgrades after completing a course.
You can stand on the, um, coconuts.
Monty Mole will move back and forth while underground.
This is how you know you're in Australia and not the Bahamas or something.
The orcas jump out only once.
Octopuses of course shoot rocks at you.
Peter Perfect will either move forward or hop up on the platform, so stay on the opposite side of the map. In his second phase, he moves faster, making him harder to dodge.
Oh, fiddlesticks – despite being the closest thing this show has to a protagonist, he suffers embarrassing mishaps in every episode. And he’s like the opposite of Dick Dastardly. He’ll lose the race because he stops to do a good deed.
When swimming, Muttley will rise upwards if you don’t hold down.
Most of the enemies here are fish.
Most of those fish move back and forth
Pink fish moves in a sine wave though.
About midway through, the scenery changes to a sunken ship.
Professor Pat Pending’ll bounce halfway across the screen and then rise up and come down at three specific spots.
In the second phase, he’ll fire two cannonballs at you when he’s in the air in the middle of the screen. Then he'll keep bouncing. Protip: try jumping when you fire your bow projectile.
Japan is now made of cake.
Rather unsanitary, though.
The bugs with red eyes will swoop down when they get close to you.
Penelope Pitstop is a lot like snake man. she’ll move back and forth and stand on the center platform while jumping and shooting cannonballs.
She’s probably the hardest boss mostly because you don’t have much space to maneuver.
Alaska/Yukon has ice physics.
Mr. Freeze's Ice Goons run after you.
Yes, I know the Intensive Care Bear on the Simpsons is pink but he’s an Intensive Care Bear and not the Intensive Care Bear so it follows that there’s the possibility of a green Intensive Care Bear out there. Anyway, the Intensive Care Bear may look threatening but simply walks back and forth and jumps and goes down in one hit from Muttley’s sonic bark. It’s really called that according to the manual (!).
The snowman just bounces there. Some of them bounce forward, though.
In Cloud Land, you’ll (meaning Muttley) jump around like you’re (meaning you) wearing a power glove.
The cloud enemies will pop up, spit a bullet at you, and fall back down to the earth.
This is the Red Max, a reference to Blue Max and Red Baron in one.
I know that in the actual Wacky Races show, it’s not obvious who’s going to win. We know it won’t be Dick Dastardly, and in fact, there's an episode where he comes close to the finish line and decides it's not his style to win a race fairly with no cheating whatsoever and it probably won’t be Peter Perfect but that’s it. I learned that it began conception as a sort of game show in which the audience would bet on who’s going to win. On a scripted tv show. Doesn’t sound very ethical to me. Anyway, that kind of explains why the boss order seems so random.
Anytown, USA is infested with Muttley clones. I’d call them evil Muttley clones but you, Muttley, are helping Dick Dastardly cheat his way to victory even though it never works, so maybe they aren’t so bad after all.
And also pigs.
The cats spend most of their time sleeping.
It’s definitely set in urban planning hell aka the sunbelt.
The Ant Hill Mob are a bunch of crooks in the original show but secondary protagonists in the other spinoff (the one that's not about Dick Dastardly)
In the first phase, they'll fire off a cannonball, move to the center of the screen, stop to fire off a really fast moving cannonball, move to the other side, fire a cannonball, and repeat. In the second phase, they'll occasionally jump up to the platforms and then fall through.
Despite the map showing us in what appears to be Colombia or Venezuela, we're in a desert fighting banditos.
Dick Dastardly has been kidnapped by raccoons. Are you a bad enough boy to rescue him?
By now, I'm starting to wonder if we've wandered into Rockin' Kats.
Even Pinky here thinks your schemes are a bit much.
Lazy Luke and Blubber Bear will jump around and occasionally fire a cannonball. There's only one phase to this fight and the defeat animation doesn't look any different from the regular animation.
I’m sorry, moai? Not only is this South America but this isn’t even a Konami game.
The final boss is the Slag Brothers: Rock and Gravel. The first phase is nothing special. Only noteworthy thing is that he’ll bounce to the left side of the screen and then bounce back instead of repeating the pattern on the other side. In the second phase, they throw clubs.
Well, that was a bit anticlimactic.
That's what you get for driving in two dimensional space.
burning question: Couldn't Dick Dastardly just ask Gerald Ford to pardon him?
Wacky Races, is, despite the name, not a racing game, although there exists an unreleased Wacky Races racing game for the Sega Genesis.
Wacky Races is a relatively obscure show from the age of The Flintstones, The Jetsons, and Scooby-Doo, with seventeen episodes and two spinoffs, one of which people call “Stop that Pigeon” because it’s repeated so often in the theme song but in actuality is called Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines. I guess it has a cult folloiwng in Japan.
The other spinoff is the Perils of Penelope Pitstop. Dick Dastardly and Muttley do not show up in that. Their suspiciously similar substitute is Sylvester Sneekly, who wants Penelope Pitstop's massive fortune.
The other racers scroll by one by one but whatever, we'll see them as we play the game.
Drat and double drat!
Hey, it's a sneil.
Muttley's basic attack is a chomp.
The only racing you'll be doing in this game is against the timer, which is rather generous.
Audrey II jumps around.
Someone described at Widget but good. On one hand, the movement is nowhere as stiff as Widget. On the other hand, about the only thing Widget and Wacky Races have in common is their graphical style and the fact that they’re platformers made by Atlus. It is a good game, if on the easy side.
Okay, I guess picking up the bones allows you to exchange them for powerups or heart increases. Six hearts is the maximum.
I don’t know if the bombs do more damage than the bark but I do know that the bombs arc, have a delay, and can’t go through walls while the bark can.
The third powerup is a hover ability, a lot like Mario's raccoon tail.
Bomb and Sonic Bark can't be used at the same time.
That's no ordinary rabbit!
Audrey III spits bullets at you. That's what you get for not feeding him all night long.
Heart increases also give you all your health back.
The chess pieces only move when you move.
In the second phase, just move away from him because he’ll jump over you and then dodge his projectile.
I dug up a character list and a Nintendo Power issue and the bosses are all named in that. This is Big Gruesome.
You get to keep all your health and powerups when you beat the level.
Quicksand isn’t usually found in the desert in real life but it’s kind of a video game trope at this point. There are sarlaccs in the quicksand.
Armadillos aren’t found in the Sahara usually. I thought they were giant shrimp at first. There’s a sprite of them standing up but in the game they’re always rolling.
Jumping on cactuses does hurt.
This was definitely inspired by Mario 3. They all are.
Pharaoh heads shoot bullets at you.
The floating statue heads can’t be stood on.
There are 100 ton weights that fall down from the sky that will temporarily smush Muttley to half-size and render him unable to attack.
We're back outside now and the crabs are red.
This is Sergeant Blast and Private Meekley.
The bosses are relatively hard compared to the stage. All the boss arenas include one bone so you can have a weapon if you die. You can try to enter the boss fight with three bones, grab the fourth one and save it for a health up. But that requires you to know in advance.
To beat him, just hide under the sinky sand. You may not be able to see but you can’t tank the hits (pun intended)
A lot of the enemies have the pattern of "run back and forth," "move in a sine wave" or
The gorillas throw boulders instead of barrels, like they're actually just Overseer Domaroth in disguise.
There exist sprites of the snakes biting, which is pointless because they all deal collision damage, or maybe it's jumping.
I wrote in my notes, "the spiky guy is impervious to your weapons" but in retrospect, I think I'm talking about a different spiky guy. These guys may or may not be impervious to your weapons but you can ignore them.
And now, despite being in southern Africa, we've entered a temperate deciduous forest.
Either this is a misplaced gibbon or a misplaced wooly monkey.
The spiky guy is impervious to your weapons.
For whatever reason, you go through another pyramid before you reach the boss.
Ruffus Ruffcut (in the show, he’s Canadian) and Sawtooth, his faithful beaver companion (see, he’s Canadian)
That's the life of Muttley.
You even get to keep your upgrades after completing a course.
You can stand on the, um, coconuts.
Monty Mole will move back and forth while underground.
This is how you know you're in Australia and not the Bahamas or something.
The orcas jump out only once.
Octopuses of course shoot rocks at you.
Peter Perfect will either move forward or hop up on the platform, so stay on the opposite side of the map. In his second phase, he moves faster, making him harder to dodge.
Oh, fiddlesticks – despite being the closest thing this show has to a protagonist, he suffers embarrassing mishaps in every episode. And he’s like the opposite of Dick Dastardly. He’ll lose the race because he stops to do a good deed.
When swimming, Muttley will rise upwards if you don’t hold down.
Most of the enemies here are fish.
Most of those fish move back and forth
Pink fish moves in a sine wave though.
About midway through, the scenery changes to a sunken ship.
Professor Pat Pending’ll bounce halfway across the screen and then rise up and come down at three specific spots.
In the second phase, he’ll fire two cannonballs at you when he’s in the air in the middle of the screen. Then he'll keep bouncing. Protip: try jumping when you fire your bow projectile.
Japan is now made of cake.
Rather unsanitary, though.
The bugs with red eyes will swoop down when they get close to you.
Penelope Pitstop is a lot like snake man. she’ll move back and forth and stand on the center platform while jumping and shooting cannonballs.
She’s probably the hardest boss mostly because you don’t have much space to maneuver.
Alaska/Yukon has ice physics.
Mr. Freeze's Ice Goons run after you.
Yes, I know the Intensive Care Bear on the Simpsons is pink but he’s an Intensive Care Bear and not the Intensive Care Bear so it follows that there’s the possibility of a green Intensive Care Bear out there. Anyway, the Intensive Care Bear may look threatening but simply walks back and forth and jumps and goes down in one hit from Muttley’s sonic bark. It’s really called that according to the manual (!).
The snowman just bounces there. Some of them bounce forward, though.
In Cloud Land, you’ll (meaning Muttley) jump around like you’re (meaning you) wearing a power glove.
The cloud enemies will pop up, spit a bullet at you, and fall back down to the earth.
This is the Red Max, a reference to Blue Max and Red Baron in one.
I know that in the actual Wacky Races show, it’s not obvious who’s going to win. We know it won’t be Dick Dastardly, and in fact, there's an episode where he comes close to the finish line and decides it's not his style to win a race fairly with no cheating whatsoever and it probably won’t be Peter Perfect but that’s it. I learned that it began conception as a sort of game show in which the audience would bet on who’s going to win. On a scripted tv show. Doesn’t sound very ethical to me. Anyway, that kind of explains why the boss order seems so random.
Anytown, USA is infested with Muttley clones. I’d call them evil Muttley clones but you, Muttley, are helping Dick Dastardly cheat his way to victory even though it never works, so maybe they aren’t so bad after all.
And also pigs.
The cats spend most of their time sleeping.
It’s definitely set in urban planning hell aka the sunbelt.
The Ant Hill Mob are a bunch of crooks in the original show but secondary protagonists in the other spinoff (the one that's not about Dick Dastardly)
In the first phase, they'll fire off a cannonball, move to the center of the screen, stop to fire off a really fast moving cannonball, move to the other side, fire a cannonball, and repeat. In the second phase, they'll occasionally jump up to the platforms and then fall through.
Despite the map showing us in what appears to be Colombia or Venezuela, we're in a desert fighting banditos.
Dick Dastardly has been kidnapped by raccoons. Are you a bad enough boy to rescue him?
By now, I'm starting to wonder if we've wandered into Rockin' Kats.
Even Pinky here thinks your schemes are a bit much.
Lazy Luke and Blubber Bear will jump around and occasionally fire a cannonball. There's only one phase to this fight and the defeat animation doesn't look any different from the regular animation.
I’m sorry, moai? Not only is this South America but this isn’t even a Konami game.
The final boss is the Slag Brothers: Rock and Gravel. The first phase is nothing special. Only noteworthy thing is that he’ll bounce to the left side of the screen and then bounce back instead of repeating the pattern on the other side. In the second phase, they throw clubs.
Well, that was a bit anticlimactic.
That's what you get for driving in two dimensional space.
burning question: Couldn't Dick Dastardly just ask Gerald Ford to pardon him?