GameWTFs.com

After my first two triumphant holiday theme months, I found it kind of fun to tie an entire month of garbage pap hard-hitting game journalism piles of words around a common, unifying theme. But this time I'm not using a holiday as my jumping-off point*

Instead I'm going to talk about four Super Nintendo games with several traits in common:

Given those rules, I dub the February 2014 GameWTFs article theme month to be about the system's Endangered SNESpecies!

So let's kick this off right, with one of the most obscure, the most I-can't-believe-it's-not-based-on-a-cartoon-show: it's the one, the only --

Why not let the game itself explain, in its own whimsical way (a text crawl):

Of course, by the time you get to the title screen, you might notice the game's first problem

...well, I guess you'd notice that Bruno's in-game sprite has a terrible case of "the crazy eyes" --

But notable by their absense? Gilbert and Lotta. Gilbert's winking, goateed (pigteed? Piggteed?) chin appears briefly when you touch the Sparkling Checkpoint Markers:

...but the only time you'll ever see crossbow-wielding, cash-register-working Lotta is on the game's title screen. "Deadly precision"? More like "deadly OMISSION!"

...that this little gamie went to market a wee wee wee bit before it was completed as planned.

And Exhibit B? The fact that there's a 4-word password screen, with 20 different word-choices making a total of 160,000 possible combinations --

...even though you only ever get one password during normal gameplay -- awarded to you after you've beaten half the levels.

(Though if you're really interested, there's a couple of other passwords floating around out there)

It's a segue ironic that you should mention "floating" -- because aside from slashing a variety of medieval wolfs, making long blind jumping (albeit often guided by coins) and riding moving platforms...

And they somehow have a strong-enough constant updraft to propel a portly porker into the wild blue yonder mild grayish vertically-oriented levels.

While it's certainly unique, it's odd that a game that stars a fat pig who is constantly eating donuts would be so focused on soaring around like some kind of porcine Ator.

Well, not TERRIBLY -- he strikes quickly, has somewhat reasonable range, and can swat most projectiles out of the air. The biggest drawback is that many of its enemies take 3 hits to kill...and you can only dash in and hit them twice before they retaliate.

However the game's two themes -- funny ideas, but not enough time to have MANY ideas -- appear once again:

The game's two kinds of power-ups are both donuts: some add to your (relatively generous) health bar, others function like limited-use throwing-stars. You can get donuts from killing enemies or from breaking open crates. And how might you break open crates?

And then there's the relatively normal "goofy medieval wolf enemies" you might expect,

There's definitely some funnier twists on the staid "wolves/arrows/swords" formula. For example:

One of the most diabolical tricks(?) up the Wolff Wizzard's sleeve involves dressing wolves up as princesses.

They blow kisses at you when you're at a distance...but when you get close, watch out! They whip off their regally-pointed dunce-cap-style hats and use them to launch a relentless stream of fireballs straight ahead.

Looking at their oddly-pink foreheads, I guess we're to assume that it is the wolf's bald head, and to further infer that these are male wolves in drag.

Yes, these enemies don't just show up for work and stand in place, they also made time to apply lipstick and put on false eyelashes in hopes that it would momentarily distract the Power Piggs before they launched fireballs at him. That's dedication!

Without a doubt these guys(?) make that other wolf (who got his head stuck in his helmet so dashes at you all out of control), look like an even bigger idiot:

to close out the "THE GOOD" list:

You meet a handful of different kinds of wolf in the first level, another few in the next two levels, and aside from one or two unique bosses,

that's all you get.

10-ish levels of those same 10-ish enemies (all of which you've seen by Level 3). There's definitely some cool new backgrounds as the levels go up, but no new mechanics.

I basically breezed through the first 6 or 7 levels...but once you get to the second-to-last level, you know it. It's harsh, has punishing challenges, and unlike the rest of the game, you can certainly end up dying. Repeatedly.

And the last level? Several orders of magnitude harder than the rest of the game put together

The game's difficulty curve is basically a cliff: be prepared to get through the entire game up to this point in under two hours, then spend many hours playing and re-playing the final stage. The glittering Checkpoints basically become "spend all your energy reaching this point, die, then re-start at the checkpoint with full health and try to reach the next checkpoint." Of course after the 3rd or so checkpoint, there's an extremely long stretch, concluding in another stretch full of geysers and spikes. (The last boss is kind of fun, though -- and mercifully has the game's final checkpoint right before him).

To reiterate: throughout the rest of the game, the "Throwing Donut" bonus weapons have been a fun toy; here, they're vital for your survival, and you'll have to scrimp and gather each one to help get by some of the more brutal challenges in obscure platformer history (my particular favorite involves THREE pairs of rotating platforms you have to climb, EACH of which contains cannon-hat-firing princess wolves, which must be taken out from a distance or at a sacrifice of health).

Well, speaking of half-baked, here's what happens when the mighty Bruno takes too much damage from his wolf(f)ish adversaries:

Same Pigg Time, same Pigg Channel, for more Endangered SNESpecies! (except it won't be about pigs). Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta bounce!