The Retro Critic

Teddy Boy

Time to go back to something a little less story-based, a little more basic, I think.

Ever heard of Teddy Boy?

Also known as Teddy Boy Blues, the game was born in the Arcade and, weirdly, the title refers to a Japanese pop song from the 80’s by Yohko Ishino. And what better way to honour that song than by making a game in which you’re a little boy shooting a gun at random creatures?

There is no better way, of course.

I will be looking at the Sega Master System port of the game today since it’s the one I’ve actually played. Unfortunately, every trace of Ishino’s song was erased from the console port: the title was changed to just Teddy Boy and the background music became something else entirely. Brazil apparently even went one step further, changing the title to Geraldinho.

Oh well…

The game itself is an arcade-style puzzle action game in which the goal is to shoot down all kinds of creatures and ninjas who are spawned from these giant die, which are just lying around everywhere, and pick them up as soon as they shrink. If you don’t pick them up when they’re all tiny, they turn into time-eating bugs which literally eat up your time in the level!

It’s a stressful though, that you might forget a little dude somewhere and that some big-eyed bug would just pop out randomly and eat up your time but, that said, it’s a relentless game so, if you keep moving, chances are you won’t have time to forget anybody.

Some of the enemies you face include Spider-Man ninjas:

Floating heads with moustaches:

These ones don’t turn into giant babies, by the way.

Not that I know of.

You’ve also got frogs:

Crocodile heads, which are admittedly scary-looking:

To be honest, they’re probably not crocodile heads.

They just look like they could be.

Slugs are, of course, everywhere in this game:

Their thing is that they can stick to ceilings and go upside down forcing you to jump in order to shoot them down sometimes.

You can also find snails all around:

How adorable are they?

They’re cute and happy, especially when they’re really small.

…

Let’s kill ’em!

Can never tell they’re snails when they walk vertically, though.

I thought they were bees at first.

Finally, we have the most annoying enemies in the game which should remind some of you of those hard-to-kill blobs from the NES game Fester’s Quest. They’re weirdly phallic yellow Cheetos you can’t just kill with one hit.

No, that would be too easy.

First they fold up and turn orange:

lol Check out that nosy snail at the top.

That is one curious snail.

The yellow Cheetos then fold up more and turn red before finally becoming tiny pick-ups.

In a game where time is of the essence and where you’re literally surrounded by moving objects that can kill you: these guys are irritating to say the least.

The main challenge of the game is to keep going no matter what and to handle the levels’ maze-like layouts as well as possible. The levels themselves tend to repeat forever so you can potentially jump off a ledge and keep dropping for ages if you want to. Unfortunately, some levels purposely slow you down by caging you up and making it difficult for you to get out quickly:

Grrr…

Wasting my time!!!

Luckily, every so often the bad guys get stuck also so the game does try to even things out.

Mwahaha!

Sometimes, it’s actually nice to be stuck in a little room so you can just wait for creatures to show up and shoot them. I wouldn’t try that every time, though.

The layouts are both varied and not too varied. I know, it’s a paradox but it’s true: although the steps and the boxes are in different places every time, you never end up in a completely different environment. It’s basically the same thing except slightly off.

The only time where I was sort of surprised by the layout was in this level:

Where it’s mostly flat and where you can drop endlessly through to the same floor.

I should mention the Bonus Levels which happen every so often. They require you to pick up the following items in order to boost your points:

Toys, sneakers, teddy bears, all the stuff you’d expect a kid to like.

Then again you can pick up beer:

Which is just confusing and probably a mistake.

You jump from platform to platform shooting di and hoping that they don’t carry snails because then your time gets eaten up.

Oh good, a dinosaur.

I was afraid it would be a snail!

That’s the kind of logic you’re forced to accept in this game.

If you stop the snail before it eats up your time, though, you get a few extra points:

Fine, I won’t touch the… DENDEN.

Whatever those are.

The game is sort of endless in that you can keep playing it past level 99 but, really, the game’s over at 50. Besides, it’s a good, fun game but why would you keep going after playing a hundred levels of it?!

I would definitely recommend you playing Teddy Boy, it’s an enjoyable, addictive puzzle action game that’s pretty hypnotic and which doesn’t get so difficult that it becomes unplayable. You can find it on several ports but if you can find the arcade version then I’d recommend that one since it’s got that funky song in it!

More games should be about murderous children, I think.

Don’t you?

Probably not, huh?