| Putt-Putt and Pep's Balloon-O-Rama | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Humongous Entertainment |
| Publisher(s) | Humongous Entertainment |
| Release Date(s) | October, 1996[1] |
| Genre(s) | Point-and-Click, Arcade |
| Platform(s) | Windows 3.1 - Windows XP System 7 - Mac OS 9.2.2 |
| Engine | SCUMM |
| Input device(s) | Keyboard and Mouse |
Putt-Putt and Pep's Balloon-O-Rama is a Junior Arcade game developed by Humongous Entertainment and released for the Windows and Macintosh operating systems in October of 1996. The game was also released in 1999 by ToyMax as an LCD handheld game.
Plot[]
As Putt-Putt and Pep are driving through the Cartown country side with some balloons, Putt-Putt tells Pep to hold on to them tightly. Pep then opens his mouth to bark and the balloons float away into the air. Putt-Putt and Pep then set out to pop all of the balloons. At the end of the game, Putt-Putt is very glad that Pep is the best balloon popping pup ever as Pep pops the final balloon. With that, the two return home.
Gameplay[]
Balloon-O-Rama's gameplay is similar to that of Breakout, a 1976 Atari arcade game. Each level of the game has old scenes from Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon, Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo and Fatty Bear's Birthday Surprise. The player controls Putt-Putt as the 'paddle' and Pep functions as the ball. Players must catch Pep with Putt-Putt as he descends downward so he may keep bouncing off of Putt-Putt to pop all balloons on screen. The player may hold down the left mouse button while catching Pep to have him preform a shorter more controlled bounce.
While many balloons are simple cosmetic skins of regular balloons, such as clowns, pigs, Fatty Bear, the Humongous logo, and more, some balloons have special effects when popped such as:
- ? Mark balloons contain power ups for Putt-Putt to catch which can aide Pep's mission to pop balloons
- A miniature Pep can be caught for an extra life
- A rubber band can be caught, turning Putt-Putt into a limousine, thus making Pep easier to catch
- A space helmet can be caught which enables the slower physics seen in bonus and space levels
- A cape can be caught, causing Pep to ignore collision and follow through popping a balloon instead of ricocheting off of it.
- Some boots can be caught, causing Pep to magnetically cling to Putt-Putt once caught, allowing for manual repositioning and relaunching.
- Spotted balloons contain small treats to be collected for extra points. The space ships in bonus levels drop aliens which function identically.
- Striped balloons drop garbage which should be avoided as it lowers your score.
- Flower patterned balloons drop a mix of treats and garbage.
- Some balloons contain a small balloon inside that also needs to be popped. Eyeball and Oyesters balloons always have a smaller balloon within.
- There are balloons 3 spaces tall which have a string in the center and a bucket below it. Pep will bounce off the string and bucket, but once the balloon is popped, the string will break and cause the bucket to fall. Catching the bucket will paint Putt-Putt the colour seen within. Do note that being painted stuns Putt-Putt for a brief animation, which can cause you to miss Pep.
- Additionally there are round button bumpers and pinwheels which cannot be destroyed and act as obstacles in later levels.
Starting at Level 10, every 5 levels a spaceship will appear once the topmost rows are cleared of balloons. It will travel back and forth across the screen a few times before vanishing. Should the player destroy the ship with Pep, they will be awarded with a space-themed bonus level. This can be difficult to do, as it requires you to clear the top levels without popping all the other balloons, as the level will end if all balloons are popped, pep is caught, even if the ship is still on screen.
Characters[]
- Putt-Putt
- Pep
- Fatty Bear (cameo)
Worlds[]
The game consists of 120 levels, with 12 different worlds each containing 10 levels.
- 1-10 Outskirts of Cartown
- 11-20 Cartown
- 21-30 Fireworks Factory
- 31-40 Cartown Zoo Gate
- 41-50 The Grasslands
- 51-60 Arcticland
- 61-70 Cave
- 71-80 Cartown Beach
- 81-90 Fatty Bear's House
- 91-100 Prize Booth
- 101-110 Spaceship
- 111-120 The Moon
Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ Five Fun New Humongous Entertainment Games to Ship in October. Humongous Entertainment. Retrieved 2011-04-15.
Trivia[]
- This game has similar tunes for levels 1-10 and the end credits. Levels 1-10 play this on horns with drums and the end credits play this on a piano.
- Editing your save data located at C:\hegames\players.bal with a text editor to have additional lives will result in the game booing and hissing you as you try to load the file, and will return you to the main menu. Editing the file to the legitimate amount will restore playability to the profile. You can however safely change Putt-Putt's colour to a different numerical value with no ill-effects.
- Upon installing the game on a 64-bit version of windows, the game may report it is incompatible with this version of windows when trying to launch the program from the AUTOBALL.EXE launcher or BALLOON.EXE directly. This can be remedied by deleting (or renaming) BALLOON.EXE and renaming BALLOON.W32 to BALOON.EXE. The .W32 file is an executable for the 32-bit native release of the executable. This works for other Humongous titles as well, although they sometimes are given the extension .A32. This will allow the game to be played natively on Windows 10 and 11, as well as any other 64-bit release of Windows.