At a Glance: Nihon Bussan Co. Ltd. brings us the creative title, "Booby Kids." My first question was, "where are the boobies?" I couldn't find the boobies, but I did travel through time collecting items from mobsters, samurai, cavemen, and robots! I also couldn't find any other titles released by this company, but after playing this game, I would understand if they had called it quits years ago.

Platform: NES (Download Emulator here - 192k)

Download: Download ROM here - 57 k


Game Plot: With a title like "Booby Kids" you would at least expect the game to be exciting. Unfortunately, you A lone mobster hoarding his money. He doesn't realize that in a few seconds he will find himself caught in a magic black hole from a Booby Kid!end up running around through a whole bunch of mazes, trying to collect a certain type of stupid item. You start off in cavemen times and have to collect orange-like fruit while dinosaurs and cavemen attempt to get in your way. The first few levels are easy because the enemies manage to travel at a slow speed, but upon reaching level four or five, the enemies start moving faster and the items are cleverly hidden behind trees (which you must blow up with bombs). How these items got behind these trees, I will never know. As the levels progress you find you are in a new part of weird history. After you steal all of the orangelike fruit from the cavemen, you are next sent to steal scrolls from samurai. Once again there are no explanations as to why you have to do this, it is just convenient for your little blue character to take scrolls from samurai. After the samurai stage you visit Chinese men and take all of their walkie-talkie radio type things from them. Then you visit mobsters and swipe all of their money, and after that you visit robots and steal their monitors. The evolution of time was going along pretty fine until I got to the last level, which is a room with a dirt floor and blue condoms with eyes that continuously attack you. There are also electric things traveling across the floor for no obvious reason, except maybe to get in your way of collecting the little tiki-heads that happen to be the last items you need to finish your uniquely retarded collection. I wish I knew what my goal as a "Booby Kid" was, I never found out even upon winning the game. Perhaps being a "Booby Kid" was a reward enough in itself.

The awesome scene where your Booby Kid flies through a red and white siphon because he chose the next level block in the bonus level!Weapons: As a "Booby Kid" you have the magical ability to throw holes onto the ground. At first I thought they were just black circles, but upon walking onto one of them, I watched my "Booby Kid" become an angel and fly away. So I started placing these circles in front of the dinosaurs and cavemen. The cavemen would get stuck and make stupid faces. I was amazed to find out that upon pushing the magic hole button again that they would become skeletons. The magic holes are not only weapons of destruction though; you can place these at areas where bridges are cut off and magically the bridge will grow so you can cross it. Once again, "Booby Kids" amazes me. Your other weapon is the ability to pick up bombs from not so obvious locations and place them in suspicious places. I found bombs by accident in level two or three. I was walking next to some fruit that was stuck behind trees, and all of the sudden I found out I could step on one of the trees. When I stepped on the tree, the word 'BOMB' surround by pink flashed up on the screen. It took me a while to realize that the tree was a bomb resupply, and not a place that you were supposed to 'BOMB.' These bomb supply depots are hidden in many different places throughout the different points in history. Trees, gray blocks, regular blocks, regular gray blocks, and anything that isn't obvious is a place to have a bomb supply. Apart from letting you find the last few items in the level before time runs out, the bombs are also very useful in destroying the enemy respawns, because the magic holes only temporarily make the enemies leave (I don't know where they go).

Here I am avoiding the end guy's fireballs by walking against the wall. It doesn't matter if they hit me, because walking against the wall has some mystic power which makes it so pink fireballs do not hurt me!Enemies: Depending on the point of history you are in, you will either find yourself fighting cavemen and dinosaurs, samurai and ninjas, mobsters, little two legged robots and green "R2D2's", blue condoms with eyes, and little creatures with white faces and red bodies (I really have no idea what these are). The little red things magically have giant skeletons just like everything else does after they die. The game really links things together so well; my head still hurts from trying to figure how Nihon Bussan managed to include all of these wonderful features into one single game.

Number of Levels: 21 incredibly deviant and irritable levels and 4 or 5 "special" bonus levels. The longest levels that come to mind are level 3 and level 21. I spent 20 minutes in level three trying to figure out how to get to the center part of the island. I noticed that only part of the bridge was there, so I walked the whole perimeter of the island looking for a switch, but I found nothing. So I came back and started laying magic holes, and of course placing one where the bridge should be managed to rebuild the bridge! As for level 21, you start off surrounded by enemies and come across a new feature, two electricity conducting things that move back and forth across the map. In the center of the map is the end guy who shoots pink fireballs. In order to win you must collect all of the tiki-heads that are laying on the floor amongst the electrical things and blue condoms with eyes. This level was truly the worst. The last 4 tiki-heads are above the boss, and his pink fireballs can kill you without actually touching you. Yet again, "Booby Kids" amazed me.

Number of Bosses: One really annoying boss in the last level. Details mentioned above.

Defining Moment: Watching the clock tick down while you are trying to find things that you can blow up, hoping that they will contain the last few items you are looking for. This wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that in the last few levels you can barely figure what things will blow up, and what is just weird crap from the level design. The best defining moment of "Booby Kids" is finding out you chose the wrong square in the bonus level, and are forced to play the level you just got through. Isn't a bonus level supposed to be a chance for you to get extra lives and stuff without having to worry about enemies and or hidden surprises? NOT IN "BOOBY KIDS"!!!

Graphics-4
Gameplay-8
Story-9
Sound-8
Fun-9
Overall-38

Each category in the rating system is based out of a possible -10 score (-10 being the worst). The overall score is based out of a possible -50 score (-50 being the worst).

– Hannya (@TwitterHasBannedAllMyAccountsEver)

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About This Column

The Rom Pit is dedicated to reviewing the most bizarre and screwed up classic console games from the 1980's, the ones that made you wonder what kind of illegal substances the programmers were smoking when they worked on them. Strangely enough, the same illegal substances are often necessary to enjoy or make sense of most of these titles. No horrible Nintendo game is safe from the justice of the ROM Pit.

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