The Adventures of Bayou Billy

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The Adventures of Bayou Billy

Developer(s)	Konami
Publisher(s)	Konami
Release date(s)	^JPN August 12, 1988 ^NA 1989 ^EU January 24, 1991
Genre(s)	Beat 'em up/First-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single player
Platform(s)	Famicom/NES
Media	Cartridge

The Adventures of Bayou Billy is a video game released in 1989 by Konami for the NES. It was released in Japan as Mad City in 1988.

It consists of three distinct playing styles used over 9 levels: shooting (optionally allowing the use of a Zapper), a side-scrolling beat 'em up, and a third-person driving section. During its release, Konami hyped the game, including a commercial with a live actor playing Bayou Billy, and went as far to sign a deal with Archie Comics. Part of the game's unpopularity was due to a rather high difficulty level, making the game very hard to beat. Strangely, the Japanese release featured a much better balanced difficulty.

The box art for the original Japanese release featured a hero who looked a lot like Paul Hogan, star of the Crocodile Dundee movies. The American box art is redrawn, likely to avoid a lawsuit. The plot of the hero rescuing a kidnapped girlfriend from a mobster is also similar to that of Crocodile Dundee II. Another similarity to the Crocodile Dundee films is that Bayou Billy starts out fighting in a Louisiana swamp for the first few stages, which presumably the hero is well familiar with, then progresses to an urban scenario where he then fights hoods on Bourbon Street, then the final stage is the luxury mansion of the gangster who kidnapped Annabelle. This may be a possible reference to the first Crocodile Dundee film, which the scenes changed from the Australian outback to New York City.

[edit] Bayou Billy in Other Media

Archie Comics published a comic book series called "The Adventures of Bayou Billy". It used some characters from the game and added some new characters. Billy was made a widower, and his girlfriend's name was changed from Annabelle Lane to Annabel Lee. The series does not fit into the game's continuity or backstory and is considered an alternate universe. It ran for 5 issues.

The game also received some amount of exposure on the popular video game-themed cartoon series, Captain N: The Game Master, where Bayou Billy (modeled somewhat like Crocodile Dundee) appeared in two episodes, the first of which was devoted to him. Playing on the difficulty of its real world counterpart, Bayou Billy was said to be the one game even Captain N was unable to conquer.

One of the The Unicorns' earlier songs is entitled "Adventures of Bayou Billy", and is presumably inspired by the NES game.

In the email "Bedtime Story" read by Strong Bad in his weekly email show on Homestarrunner.com, Strong Bad tells his friend/pet The Cheat a story in which he and NBA legend Moses Malone have misadventures together. In the story, they both go off to play video games. Although not shown, it is said by Malone that the game is Bayou Billy, and that The Cheat better have "s-s-saved your receipt," possibly a reference to the game's high difficulty.