The Adventures of Bayou Billy

Overview

The Adventures of Bayou Billy is a platforming game with additional driving and Zapper based shooting sections. It was developed and published by Konami for the Nintendo Entertainment System, and was first published in Japan under the title Mad City. Well known for being extremely difficult, it is often compared to Rare's Battletoads in terms of frustratingly hard gameplay.

Story

The game puts the player in control of "Bayou" Billy West. After Godfather Gordon kidnaps Billy's girlfriend Annabelle Lane, Billy must brave the obstacles Gordon has put in place in order to rescue her. His journey takes him from the Louisiana swamps to Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

Gameplay

The Adventures of Bayou Billy features three distinct gameplay modes. Each of the game's stages is comprised of one mode.

Side-scrolling brawler: The majority of the game puts the player in control of Billy as he fights off hordes of enemies with punches, kicks, and whatever weapons he can pick up along the way.

Driving: Two stages in the game put the player in control of a jeep that must reach its destination before a time limit expires. To get to the end of these stages, the player must dodge obstacles and defeat enemy cars and helicopters along the way.

Light Gun: Some stages in the game are light gun stages meant for use with the NES Zapper Light Gun. In these stages, the player must shoot enemies as they appear on screen.

Trivia

• The game features DPCM coded voices of Bayou Billy speaking at the beginning and end of the game, and of the main antagonist, Godfather Gordon, between stages.
• The Japanese version, Mad City, is less challenging than the English language version.
• Archie Comics published a comic book series based on the game, which further developed the characters.
• The theme and plot of the game are similar to the film Crocodile Dundee II. The Bayou Billy character art on the Japanese box even looked similar to Crocodile Dundee.
• Bayou Billy appeared on two episodes of the NES themed cartoon series Captain N: The Game Master. He appears in an episode titled "How's Bayou", where he is the main villain. Joking about the difficulty of the game, Bayou Billy was said to be the one game even Captain N was unable to finish.
• A LCD handheld version of the game was also released.