Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose! -- Stage 2

Описание: Well, the first stage was a fairly comfortable ride to get players used to the controls of the game in a fairly low-stress environment designed to get you thinking in terms of how the dash works and the logic you can use to apply it to your advantage.

That ends here! Buster takes the opportunity to inquire whether or not you're actually ready to get going with it in earnest, and Plucky hammers it home that it's very much worth your while to use it to your advantage...thanks guys, I guess.

I want to call attention to a small bit of the explanation here...note that Buster explicitly says "L or R buttons" in his explanation...which I didn't honestly think much of, but it'll come into play later when I describe why for the longest time I was unable to finish this game.

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Stage 2: Western Movie

The dash actually doesn't get much potential use in the beginning of this stage, although as you'll see, there's a bit of an unusual application available to those who stumble upon it.

I have to wonder why anyone would just hang out all afternoon in a window to drop perfectly good tomatoes on passersby. Maybe they're just as sick of people messing up those meticulously-stacked barrels and knocking them through their windows, I don't know.

There's also the even greater curiosity of what appears to be Wile E. Coyote in western garb, pacing back and forth while bowing and dropping a tomato out of his hat.

For no reason at all, we stop to play jump rope with a couple of ...I don't even know, middle-aged-faced jump-ropers in sombreros...

A note about jumping rope here...the counter will go down every time you make a landing, even though Buster's full jump will allow for just one between swings of the rope. If you make really short hops and pretend like it's double Dutch jump rope, you can be done in half the time. If you get tripped up, you've got to start over again with one heart less.

A flurry of boisterous buzzards and jumpy horses and a surprisingly chaotic climb of stairs later, we find Max in the midst of a heist...is this what he thought the "star" should be doing?

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An interesting transition later, and we reach the second phase of the stage: hot pursuit on board a speeding locomotive.

It's worth mentioning that the more challenging or complex parts of stages are often removed for the Children difficulty, like the cafeteria segment of the first stage. Likewise, this stage from here on out is decidedly off-limits to younger audiences.

And rightly so! This stage can be rather vexing for even seasoned players, particularly since it pushes Buster's dash abilities to their limits now and then...usually just after a blow of the train's whistle.

After collecting the golden Gogo statue, Buster enters into a long period of invulnerability, but that barely shows through here by making him mostly invisible by showing only one set of the alternating frames. Sorry about that.

Just what kind of crazy train are we on, though? The tracks are clearly not set up to handle this, and then we take a quick jump to apparently a new set where the rest of the train is intact and just about to enter into a darkened tunnel. Someone with a better grasp of the Tiny Toons will have to explain to me why we're jumped by bulldog park rangers and thugs wearing Yale sweaters, though.

It seems Max has hired Arnold to unhook the cars and toss boards at pursuers...although by cartoon logic, he should've known better than to think this would be a means of allowing Buster to cross the gap.

You may notice that at the end of this segment, Buster simply stops moving before the end of the train car. From here to the end of the next jump, he's on autopilot! Funny thing is, it's automatic according to button assignment, so it "presses" L or R instead of specifically executing a dash, so I couldn't pass this stage because I would often change the controls to put the dash on Y instead, so it would always make me drop kick to my doom. Oops!

We regain control in the "boss" section. The engine is out of control! Little did I realize, you've actually got to ATTACK the already haywire exposed bits to proceed...crazy!

Amidst the chaos, Max seems to have hit wit's end. Once you reach him, the stage is over for the player. Everything else goes off automatically. (I didn't realize this; I was trying desperately to pick up speed for fear of instant death, but all was for naught.)

Once you reach 88 miles per hour, great Scott! ...although I don't think any time travel is involved.

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"Wheels 'O' Game"...I cringe every time. Not one bit of that label is grammatically correct.

This time it's Hamton's turn to lead the bonus train with a game that's rather like a combination of Pipe Dream/Pipe Mania and a sliding pieces puzzle game.

The controls can be a little confusing, as you control the hole itself and any other button will increase Hamton's running speed while held.