The Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout (1990) NES Game Mini Review

I beat The Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout! Boy oh boy did I ever beat this game. Ayep. Beat the hell outta that game.

I’m gonna be honest with you, dear reader; there is not a single interesting thing to say about The Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout. It’s a 1990 NES platformer starring Bugs Bunny, and it plays things totally safe. There are no interesting mechanics, or cool bosses, or good level design choices (both visual and literal). Graphics, music, and controls are all totally passable. The final boss is *checks notes* the Tazmanian Devil wearing a little football helmet. He throws very slow moving footballs at you, and dies in three hits…all without his trademark spin. I even scoured the Japanese side of the internet to see if there were any weird factoids about the game’s development, or secret codes or something, and I couldn’t dig up anything.

Despite my unimpressed tone, this technically isn’t a bad game at all. Just a painfully average one, likely meant for very young gamers. The bulk of NES games were technically aimed at kids, sure, but many of them didn’t pull any punches on difficulty despite that fact. BBBB on the other hand, is a kid’s game that feels like a kid’s game because it’s mind numbingly easy. I guarantee that even the worst players will be able to beat it with fifty extra lives by the end, because the game hands out 1UPs like they’re candy. I can’t get especially angry at something aimed at pre-schoolers without looking like a doofus, now can I?

Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout is an inoffensive amorphous blob of a game, taking up space in the Nintendo Entertainment System’s library. So if you’re in the mood for a dead easy platformer that’s perfectly down the middle in terms of quality, The Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout is the most okayest choice you can make.