The Mog Blog

Games can be pretty hard. Hard Mode is a feature of The Mog Blog that loves to showcase some of the most difficult and ridiculous challenges that can be found in games; recent, old, near or far. Warning: We are not responsible for any damaged controllers or equipment due to attempts at trying these out.

Nintenhard? Nintendo Hard? For anyone that is familiar with their Nintendo games, they know of the nasty sting of the extreme difficulty and cheapness that resides in these gray carts. One of which I want to point out is The Adventures of Bayou Billy.

Pfft, you can have her.

The Adventures of Bayou Billy is about a man’s terrible journey of rescuing his girlfriend by way of fist fighting near-invincible foes, driving through hell with a paper-thin jeep, and shooting baddies with a zapper. Yes, it’s natural that the latter is the only thing that sounds fun, and it actually is.

It’s been a long known fact that Bayou Billy is not the strongest guy out there. Right from the first enemy, you realize that you’re in for a rough road ahead since it takes nine hits to take one down. Consider this to be near-equal footing, as you are also able to die in the same amount of hits. This would be fine if the A.I. was dumb, but in this case they do retaliate and each fight does end up being more about spacing and timing. This amount of stress is multiplied by the number of enemies on screen. Good freakin’ luck. How I managed to beat this as a five-year old kid is completely beyond me.

The jeep part has its own level of annoyances. Imagine Rad Racer with shooting (or Max Rider if you can remember that guy) and dying in one hit if you bump into anything. Now imagine driving on a very narrow road with constant turning. Not very fun, I assure you. Oh, you want an accelerator button? How about holding that up button for the entire time? Sore thumbs ahoy!

I devote my life to this paper-thin jeep!

What really strikes me as odd is what I discovered. The Adventures of Bayou Billy was released in Japan as Mad City before Bayou Billy came out. I guess for whatever reason, Konami felt that the western release needed to be buffed up a bit for the hardcore players here. If you were to sit down with Mad City, you’ll find a good number of changes compared to Bayou Billy. The biggest change would be the amount of health the enemies have. Instead of hitting them nine times, they die in three hits.

… Three… nine… What the…?

The jeep portions were also changed, now featuring a straight road with no turns and a health bar with a nice dose of Sunday drive. If anything, it drives me nuts that Konami would even consider this to be a smart move. Yes, hard games can be fun. Bayou Billy is funny because, holy crap, why is it so needlessly hard?

The gun segments for both versions are relatively the same, the only real difference is the amount of bullets you have on hand. Though having zero bullets at any time during the gun parts will kill you, you’re generally fine as long as you’re not spraying and praying.

If you want a challenge, I’d say give The Adventures of Bayou Billy a chance. If you want to play a normal game for normal people, try to hunt down Mad City for the Famicom.

And be prepared to see this a lot.