Famicom World

Intro (Storyline) 2.0

Our feces flinging friend is at it again in this hard to find yet somewhat disappointing pirate sequel. Struggle and Glitch your way through slimy booger-covered forests full of bouncing slimes and hammer flinging monkeys and collect all the plungers you can to get the highest score!

This is a pirate sequel, so to be sure you will recognize a lot of things copied directly from the original, even though it is from a different company. It is developed by Rex Soft, and is quite a bit different. Not quite as good as the original pirate port of Boogerman, but fun enough. Good luck getting through this one.

The storyline, unfortunately, is word for word the same as Boogerman 1 for Famicom. The background image for the story is the same too. Lame, and barely better than nothing at all.

Graphics 4.0

Well, the graphics aren't Genesis level graphics, and they aren't even as polished as the Boogerman 1 pirate, but they are still pretty nice for a Famicom game. The colors are vibrant, and they have nice little details like moving eyeball plants and faces in the trees that really add to the overall look of the game. The fonts they used in this game are a really nice touch as well, and are an improvement over the original. You will also notice, if you can get far enough, that they have succeeded through the graphics (and music) to make the levels feel different and fresh.

Unfortunately some of the movements, especially of Boogerman himself, seem like they need more frames. When he dies, he basically just disappears, for example.

Audio 4.0

Much like the famicom Boogerman 1 pirate, this game has great music. Right off the bat you hear a pounding drum heavy intro that really gets you excited to play the game! The levels have varying music too that fits the mood of the graphics for each level quite well. The music is probably the best part of this game.

Before I touched any buttons, I thought this game was going to be absolutely awesome. I'm not saying it's Battletoads quality, but the music is really top notch and better than expected.

On the downside, the sound effect leave something to be desired and, even though they are nearly non-existent, they still glitch up the music sometimes. I have no idea if this music is original to this game or not of course. I haven't personally heard it before though. I'm pretty sure I would remember, since it's really that good.

Gameplay 3.0

The idea of the game is to collect as many plungers as possible and then make it to the end of each level. The more plungers you have collected at the end of each level the more points you will get. You can also collect capes and little bars of soap, which I believe replenish your health and ammo (it's a bit hard to tell).

The game is separated into worlds. Each world has three stages, and the third stage has a Boss to fight. The first world is Flatulent Swamps, a dark and slimy forested area guarded by the chicken-hurling Mickboy. After that is The Pits, which despite the name is a bright level of yellows, greens, and purples leading up to a battle with Revolta, who throws her ugly face at you at a weapon. The third world is Boogerville, which is somewhat reminiscent of the swamps but with houses and new enemies. If you can get past Flyboy at the end of Boogerville you are better than me!

Controls 1.5

This is where this game fails and fails hard. Boogerman II is one of those games where up is jump instead of the buttons. Besides this horrible design choice, your character is excruciatingly slow! He looks like he is running in place.

The ways that you attack enemies are by throwing snot (A button) and projectile feces (B button). These attacks aren't too hard to use, but you have a limited amount of both of them. Your other option, to conserve ammo, is to jump on top of some enemies to kill them. It's really hard to jump on the enemies due to somewhat bad collision detection and because you are slow! Damn slow!

On top of this, there is no pause in this game! Start and select do nothing at all! Ugh!

Frustrations 2.0

There are glitches abound in this game. You can jump up above the screen and walk over the whole level in many places. Jumping on the bad guys is nearly impossible and by the time you get to the third boss (Flyboy) you don't have enough ammo to kill him without jumping on him a lot. You do get some continues, so that helps.

Another thing that is frustrating is that the status bars in this game are really hard to read. It's tough to tell what is your life and how close you are to dying and it's also hard to tell how much ammo you have left. To add insult to injury, while the status bars are tiny and illegible, there is a nice big picture of Boogerman's face in the top left of the screen. Too bad it doesn't tell you anything useful at all!

Fun Factor 2.0

Unfortunately the controls really hurt this game's fun factor. The graphics and especially the audio really make me want to like it, but it's nearly unplayable. The levels are pretty difficult but it feels a bit random as to whether or not you get hit, so successfully passing a level doesn't feel all that rewarding.

Overall 2.5

The nice thing about this game is that the graphics and music are great and each world seems to have a fresh atmosphere, so it makes you want to get to that next world to see and hear it! It's probably below average when compared against your average licensed Famicom cart, but if you are grading it against other pirates it's definitely a cut above the norm.

So yeah, the controls are brutal, and you have to be something of a masochist to play this for any length of time, but I've played worse. I think I'll give Flyboy another try maybe after a while.