Lost Classics: Bucky O’Hare (NES)

Based on the comic book of the same name, Bucky O’Hare was one of those shows that had a cult following without achieving much commercial success. Taking place in an alternate dimension where animals live as humans, it told the story of spaceship captain Bucky O’Hare, his crew, and their quest to defeat the Toad Empire, which has been brainwashed by the supercomputer KOMPLEX. It only lasted one season, but it was enjoyable for what it was. The obligatory marketing blitz followed, and Konami, riding the success of their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle games, snatched up the gaming rights. Along with a solid arcade beat-em-up (which featured the show’s voice actors and served as a conclusion to the events of the cartoon series), they released this equally solid NES platformer which seems to draw inspiration from Capcom’s Mega Man.

As Bucky O’Hare himself, you travel around to four planets to rescue your crew members. You can select the order in which you complete them. After you complete a stage, you rescue a member of your crew, at which point you can change between them on the fly. Each crew member has his or her own set of abilities, and there are situations in the game in which they’ll come in handy. You’ll face off against enemies from the show, and the game features a password save. As you can see, Konami borrows heavily from Mega Man’s playbook, but thankfully, Bucky borrows the parts of Mega Man that work best. That’s not to say anything negative about Bucky, but more like a case of great minds (and game developers) thinking alike. Konami has created an enjoyable game out of an obscure intellectual property, and that’s something that we can’t say about very many games released today which utilize preexisting licenses (and this applies even if the license is well known). Unfortunately it goes without saying that there is a next to zero chance of this game (or the arcade game) showing up on any download service, Virtual Console or otherwise, in the near future. Lord only knows who holds the licensing rights to Bucky O’Hare, and if Konami is even interested in re-using the property again. Thus, this is one of those hidden gems you’ll have to hunt down.