Baby Boomer
System: NES
Release Date: 1989
Developer: Color Dreams
Publisher: Color Dreams
Genre: Light Gun Shooter/Platformer
I decided to include some of the unlicensed NES games on my list, because I don’t want to miss out on Tengen… I probably should have left Color Dreams on the sidelines after playing Baby Boomer. On the surface, this is a light gun shooter/platformer, like Gumshoe, which I really liked back in the 1986 games. As we go deeper, we find a lot of dirty diapers.
You follow the baby, Boomer, as he crawls from left to right on the stage. You are apparently helping this small child from afar by shooting just about everything you see. Understandably, nature wants to put an end to this little poop machine, so you need to have a quick trigger finger to shoot snakes, cats, skeletons, possums?, and more. If you fail, enjoy being taunted with a neener, neener, neener by the game.
If the baby gets hit by an enemy or falls into a trap, it’s back to the beginning of the level. Make sure not to shoot the gold nuggets, because baby can collect those to earn extra lives. Well, maybe if you shoot them, you’ll lose all your lives earlier and then can quit.
Graphics: 1.0
Very poor, just really unattractive, though you can tell what things are. You want to pull the trigger a lot to see the different hit spots that are active on screen.
Sound: 0.5
Terrible constantly looping garbage. If you die, you get taunted by the sound effects.
Gameplay: 1.0
It barely works. The hit detection is pretty awful, even when you’re shooting the square, it doesn’t necessarily register. If you pull the trigger too much, things start to glitch out.
Difficulty: 1.0
This is a memorization game. You’ll have to chip away at it, learning where every enemy pops out and every hidden platform is.
Fun Factor: 0.0
This is not a fun game. It is a chore to play, annoying, and badly designed.
Overall Grade: 0.7
Baby Boomer earns a D-. This is garbage. Not even the Nintendo Seal of Approval, which anyone can get, adorns this filthy, festering diaper of a game.