It only took, what, 6 years? But at least, it's finally done and I can strike another project off of my "Lost in Limbo" list.
I wanted to comment a bit on these since I really feel that Bucky O'Hare is a great NES game that pushes the technical limits of the console quite a bit in terms of graphics. It might not be that difficult but it's reasonably challenging and the music is great as expected from Konami. No thumbnail this time since the maps are too big and dark to make them useful.
The first four stages can be completed in any order you like except that you need to complete the Green Planet and thus free Blinky to break the ice blocks in your way on the Blue Planet. I've assigned them numbers for ease of browsing based on their positions on the stage select screen.
Level 1: Green PlanetThe Green Planet is a relatively straightforward level with nothing of interest except Act 5 which features a great differential scrolling effect (I hope I'm using the right term). The whole background is divided in sections which scroll at different rate (both ship layers as well as the background mountains and then the ground).
Level 2: Red PlanetThe Red Planet is a lot more animated, featuring rocks you need to push in the fire to stand safely, very quick lava flows coming after you in Act 3 (their paths are shown with dithering), giant fire flares in Act 4, a long vertical shaft where platforms scroll right and left, and finally a few areas with a parallax background effect and eventually a giant green ball crossing the screen continuously which you have to ride until you can fight as it actually is the boss,
Level 3: Blue PlanetThe Blue Planet features a lot of ice blocks and later ice spheres, and I did a bit of sprite editing to show which blocks contain enemies or powerups. There are a few sections with giant snakes who appear from off-screen and eventually make their way across the area (watch out for their heads) and I used some dithering to show blocks that eventually covered by them. Nothing else interesting as a mapper except some rising and falling piston in Act 8.
Level 4: Yellow PlanetThe Yellow Planet features a lot more differential scrolling in Acts 3 and 4 and again, each ship layer moves at its own speed. Act 5 features meteors flying in every direction but I managed to capture their general starting positions, and Act 6 is literally a high-speed roller-coaster where you have to hop on the next platform as soon as yours slows down or else you'll fall to your death.
Level 5: CellContrary to all the other stages, the Cell is actually a bit of a maze, so I've had to use a lot more arrows to show how everything is arranged. You can't go back to previous Acts but a single Act might consist of several areas and elevators. There are a few places where the ground will drop away under you and there are also appearing and disappearing blocks like in the Mega Man series. Both are depicted with dithering but it's easy to tell them apart.
Level 6: Salvage ChuteThe Salvage Chute is actually pretty difficult, featuring horizontal (in Act 2) and vertical (in Act 5) crushers as well as a lot of enemies like all the beetles travelling up and down in Act 3 and the slug in Act 4 which throw themselves at your head. Acts 6, 7 and 8 are rooms which go completely dark after a few seconds, and all you can see afterward are the small areas illuminated by travelling lights. To replicate this effect partly, I used dithering to make the rooms appear darker and left the areas around the lights bright.
Level 7: Center of Magma TankerThe Center of Magma Tanker is where everything is seriously getting serious. First, you have to survive four Acts where the walls constantly move apart before closing in, something I didn't feel like wasting time to reproduce. I showed the walls closed since what you really need to know are the safe spots. After that, you get gravity and anti-gravity zones, conveyor belts, four more rooms where the middle of the room rotates by 90 degrees every few seconds (Acts 8 through 11), and three more rooms with the snakes from the Blue Planet making a reappearance.
Level 8: Escape!Escape! is the final stretch, and it's actually a quite difficult stage if you don't have very good reflex (which is my case). It also sports an impressive parallax effect as well as color palette rotation and animated background tiles. First you need avoid steam jets as well as toads grabbing onto your ship which drags you down and attack drones, then blast your way through emergency shutters (which *will* crush you if you don't get out of the way) and some more drones but with increased speed, then destroy an annoying miniboss with ground and ceilling tracks, destroy a giant Toad warship and finally face Toad Air Marshal in close-quarter combat with a deadly wall of fire pushing you against him.
I think that's enough for the night!
