The Adventures of Bayou Billy

North American box art.

The Adventures of Bayou Billy is a multi-genre action video game developed and published by Konami for the NES on 1988-08-12. The game uses three different game play systems: beat 'em up, driving, and light gun shooting. In the game, Billy's girlfriend Annabelle has been kidnapped by a man named Gordon, so Billy must journey from his home in the Bayou to the city plantation of Gordon to rescue her.

Personal

I first played The Adventures of Bayou Billy around 1990 at my friend's house. At the time, I thought the game was pretty cool, but as my tastes in gaming have matured, I've come to loathe it. However, the original Japanese version is a bit better.

Status

I own this game, but I have not beaten it, and have no intention of trying.

Review

3	3	4	6	3

Best Version: Famicom

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• The cut-scenes are drawn quite nicely.
• The intro and ending songs are both pretty good, and the rest of the music is adequate.
• The game makes use of some pretty impressive technical tricks. The warped fade in title screen is really impressive for the NES. The large scrolling text during the intro, and the voice saying "The Adventures of Bayou Billy" is surprisingly clear.
• The background art in the city scenes are pretty good.

Bad

• There are a lot of problems with the sprites in the game. The animation is very poor, and, without a flicker system in place, they frequently fail to draw properly.
• The backgrounds in the bayou areas are poorly drawn. I think they look better in the original Japanese art.
• The driving sections are uninspired and too repetitive.

Ugly

• The American game is far too hard. Getting good at it requires you to find and exploit problems in the AI in the beat-em-up stage, and have extremely fast reflexes in the driving and shooting stages. Strangely, the Japanese release was noticeably easier.
• The player control in the beat-em-up sections is terrible. The player doesn't respond well, enemies don't react to being punched or kicked properly, etc.
• Like most multi-genre games, this one is pretty awful. Not enough work was put into each section so they're all pretty bad resulting in an inferior game. The beat-em-up section is worse than other beat-em-ups, and the driving section is worse than other driving games. The shooting section is actually superior to most shooting games, but that's not saying much.

Media

Box Art

• 

  The Japanese box has Billy standing in a bayou flanked by an image of Gordo holding a knife to Annabelle. The art is decent, but it looks unfinished in the background. The lettering is good, but the green layout looks off.

• 

  The American and European box uses the gray Konami layout with different artwork by Tom duBois. Billy is more rag-tag and Annabelle is more sleazy, but, overall, it's better art. The logo is really good.

Documentation

• 

  Game manual.

• 

  This American ad includes screenshots from the Japanese version.

Maps

• 

  USA maps.

• 

  Japanese maps.

Video

Commercial.

Longplay, North American version.

Longplay, Japanese version.

Titles

Language	Native	Transliteration	Translation
English	The Adventures of Bayou Billy
Japanese	マッド・シティ	Maddo Shiti	Mad City

Links

        64x64px