Bugs Bunny & Taz: Time Busters Review (PS1)
Infogrames' sequel to Bugs Bunny Lost in Time, Bugs teams up with Taz to repair the time regulator and keep reality from collapsing in Time Busters!
Developer: Artificial Mind and Movement
Publisher: Infogrames
Release Date: 24th November 2000.
Platform: PlayStation, PC.
Did you know that Taz only appeared in five Looney Tunes shorts? And somehow he’s one of the more popular Looney Tunes characters. So for Artificial Mind and Movement’s (as BeHaviour Interactive was known as in the 2000’s) sequel to Bugs Bunny Lost in Time they paired up the wascilly wabbit with the devil from down under.
I had first played this game when I was 9 on yet another demo disc which let me play around in Granwich, play a game of rugby in the Aztec era, and a dance rhythm game in the Arabian era. One vivid memory I distinctly have with playing the demo is eating a banana sandwich one afternoon while splashing around in the pond as Taz. At this time I had already loved swimming around as Spyro in Gateway to Glimmer and could easily spend ages doing it, so testing how it feels on this and how different it was to Spyro I found I enjoyed it equally as much. I think I was simply amused with swimming in games as a kid.
Anyway, nostalgia story over for now.
Bugs and Taz Time Busters starts with Daffy strolling up as a pest control exterminator to Granny’s particularly sci-fi abode where she happens to oversee time with a giant time regulartor. In Daffy’s attempts to dispose of a pestering mouse, he leaps at the mouse hiding atop of the large diamond powering her contraption and accidentally transports with the diamond to another dimension and destroys the time regulator in the process. A stray gear rolls along and falls into Bugs’ hole and bonks him on the head and peering out he sees chaos has ensued with vikings, wolves, and gremlins all running amok. He’s then snagged by a rampaging Taz and brought to Granny who ropes Bugs into another time travelling escapade to recover the diamond from Daffy and the lost gears of the time regulator. And to help him out she’s lumped Taz in to work with him. It is very straightforward and easy stuff.
There are five areas to the game; Granwich, which serves as the central hub of the game and tutorial area, Aztec era, Viking era, Arabian era, and Transylvanian era. In the Granwich area, Granny and Tweety serve as your guide teaching you all the tutorials you’ll need to know. Tweety will show up in the other eras mostly teaching you newer things about the level, but when you learn new moves, such as rolling as Bugs and blowing bubblegum to float as Taz, Granny will pop back up again. Within each area you solve puzzles, do a few rhythm games, play some sports, a racing level, and platform your way around to collect the gears. With each main goal completed you’ll collect three gold coins which will lead you into the final level of the area for a boss fight against Yosemite Sam, Elmer Fudd, Babba Chop, and Count Bloodcount, each defeated through solving more puzzles. Once you’ve gotten the time gem back from Daffy’s greedy grabbers and collected all of the gears it’s back to Granwich to restore the time regulator and everything is back to normal! Well, aside from Daffy becoming tiny.
It plays a lot like Lost in Time with some obvious improvements. Bugs controls mostly the same way; you can sneak, kick, jump, glide with your ears, and dive into holes, or just straight into the ground for the same comical “Thunk! Whump” as you smack and flop on the floor. You collect carrots the same as before for health and once your health is full they stock up. Some things have changed with the controls, such as the roll ability from before is now a super ability you hold square to do which makes you roll into small spaces or plow through a line of vikings like a bowling ball, crashing pin sound effect and all. Bugs gets a few more abilities such as when going into first person you can not only look about more directly but go into snipe mode and shoot carrots that you have been collecting. Useful for shooting down floating lost ones in levels and solving puzzles in the Transylvania era. With those changes comes use of controlling two characters. L1 recalls Bugs or Taz, depending on who you’re playing at the moment, with a zip into place from above and R1 switches characters, or as the game depicts it, who has a hold of the magic mirror. Ideally this is a game for two people to play but you can still go through it single player and, when doing so, moving the right thumbstick you can also move about the character you’re not currently selected as. It’s a neat little thing.
As Taz you can spin around with square and holding it you can super spin making you spin wildly a lot longer. Circle you can scare enemies, helpful when luring a mouse through a maze to scare an elephant off a wizard. Jumping and pressing triangle you can drill into dirt patches to create a hole for Bugs to dive into. Being a lot stronger than Bugs, Taz can pick up larger objects and push larger blocks around for puzzles, though Bugs can still throw about rocks and bombs. Additionally Taz and Bugs can both swim around too.
There’s a lot that the two characters can do off each other with their abilities when it comes to solving puzzles. For example if there’s a hard to reach ledge, Bugs can bounce of Taz’s head for a greater jump height. Taz can drill a hole for Bugs and while burrowing around Bugs can bump up platforms for Taz to climb and jump along. There’s a great deal of co-operative gameplay with the two characters. Depending on who you’re playing with it can make for some frantic and fun co-op gameplay but if you’re playing by yourself it adds another layer of puzzle solving for you to figure out which character is needed where. You get lives as well with clapboards, but so long as one character is still alive, you can revive the other by finding an Acme parcel nearby to set free your partner.
Overall, it plays pretty well and is a solid build-up from Lost in Time. It’s enjoyable playing as Bugs and Taz and they both feel incredibly distinctive, from their individual abilities to how it feels controlling them. Bugs has long strides in his walk while Taz has a funny rapid pattering of his feet and tiny legs. The bubblegum ability for Taz can take a little time to get used to figuring out how the inflating works properly, but in time you’ll get the hang of it. The special abilities feels like they take a second too long to build up its use. If that was snappier it would’ve made for much faster gameplay I feel. But either way it’s good fun controlling Bugs and Taz around. There are even some fun little idle animations between the two, such as if they’re standing around doing nothing Taz will start snapping his teeth, getting closer and closer to Bugs until he eventually bites him and causes him to lose a carrot and some health. It’s a funny little touch. I like it.
It looks a little better from Lost in Time, though that still looked good too. It feels like a cartoon that you’re playing again, so that’s a plus. Well, a requirement really. I feel it’s like playing a Friz Freleng/Chuck Jones mixed cartoon with Jones backgrounds, so it wonderfully looks like Looney Tunes. There are some good detailing to the level designs. Each era has great visual distinctions from the wooden Viking era, to the spooky and eerie Transylvanian era, the rich Aztec era and the beautiful Arabian era. Though while it’s supposed to be a time travel adventure, it is odd how on one island area there’s these sections in each corner made for each era just there. In that it doesn’t much feel like time travel as Lost in Time was but nipping down the road to the Aztec era then popping across the street to the Viking era. There are some impressive visuals however, such as reflective surfaces, predating PS5 reflective surfaces by 22 years.
As cartoony as it looks I did sometimes find trying to figure out what to do I was lost as some details for solving puzzles aren’t very distinct. There are level hints in the pause menu to point you in the right direction, and occasional text boxes popping up providing clues, but if you don’t read it quick enough you could get rather stumped. Especially in the Transylvania era. While you can identify there are colour coded gear boxes and doors to towers, there’s nothing too clear pointing out that you can lure the colour specific homonculi to the brain transfer so you can control them and break these items. Maybe that’s foolishness on my part, but I can imagine kids getting lost on it.
Meanwhile, loading screens are sparse but transitions between scenes from cutscenes to gameplay to play areas are stitched together with an iris in and iris out. It’s a good cartoony touch. And of cartoony touches, there’s some great animation in this which helps sell the slapstick in the cutscenes. Even in the gameplay it can be hilarious. There’s just something about playing rugby against two zombies as Taz and hurling the fuck out of the ball out of bounds at 50 miles an hour then Taz screaming in frustration at it. If you really mess around with this game for the sake of being silly you’ll have a lot of laughs with it. Which I argue is more the intended purpose of video games. They’re digital toys. Piss around with them! Have fun! And you can with this, too!
Enemy designs are appropriately goofy, some making a repeat appearance such as the small guys with helemts on too large that covers their eyes, those ones you have to jump on their heads to squash them then give them the boot. The homonculi in the Transylvanian era remind me a lot of the Monstars from Space Jame with their shapes, colour design, odd moles, and even their shoes that sell that comparison to me. It’s not so bad.
The game sounds more of the same as Lost in Time. The music sounds good and it’s very catchy and playful and feels like a good follow up to Lost in Time having the same sound to it. The sound effects are also appropriately cartoony with zips, piano slams, slaps, string scratches, spins, screeching halts, and oofs. Bugs is voiced by Billy West who also does Elmer Fudd, and Taz is voiced by Jim Cummings. June Foray is back as Granny, Maurice LaMarche is also back yet again for Yosemite Sam, and Joe Alaskey does Daffy, Tweet, Babba Chop, and Count Bloodcount. Surprise surprise, they’re all fantastic.
This was one of those games I only ever got to play on a demo disc as a kid and never got to fully play until I was an adult. It was through the first year of the pandemic I managed to get a hold of this and play it fully. Only took 22 years and a pandemic to do it. But I have to say I enjoyed it. It made me laugh, it felt good to play, it felt rewarding solving puzzles. I had fun with it. There are some janky problems with clarity around puzzles, how to beat the bosses, animation errors such as in the opening cutscene a manic creature from the Transylvanian era will just disappear behind Bugs, and slight camera issues, but they don’t take away too much from the game. Some parts feel a little hollow and predictable, like every area has the same level types and activities to do, they’re very much by design, and some bits are a bit of a drag to get through such as the Haunted River in the Transylvanian era (if you miss a gear or two near the end of the level, you have to patiently ride through that whole thing more than once.) But overall it’s a fun game. In co-op you’re sure to have a lot of fun with a friend or sibling working together or annoying each other, alone you’ll be pleasantly amused. It’s an entertaining little puzzle platformer collectathon that sticks around for as long as it needs to (only about 5-6 hours long, which is an average affair for this) and for a sequel it’s pretty alright. It does what a sequel should do by fixing its past problems and adding more to what you already could do.
If you’re a Looney Tunes fan, definitely worth a look into. Same for puzzle and platformer fans, you’ll have a good time.
Where to Purchase (As of 16/09/22):
Ebay: £15-£475 (that’s silly)/ $30-$600
Amazon: £40-55/$56-$100
CeX: £20