If you grew up watching Disney cartoons in the early '90s, you might remember Bonkers.
Originally debuting back in 1993, the animated show about a washed-up cartoon bobcat who gets a job as a police officer working for the Toon division of the Hollywood Police Department was frequently aired as part of the Disney Afternoon, forming a block of programming alongside other notable Disney shows like Aladdin, Goof Troop, Gargoyles, and Darkwing Duck.
It also received a few different video games throughout the decade, allowing viewers to experience the zany adventures of the titular cop themselves — the most famous of these was arguably the 1994 SNES platformer from developer Sun L and publisher Capcom. First launched back in 1994, this game followed the bobcat as he tried to track down three missing artifacts that had been stolen from the local Toontown museum, and was praised by publications of the time (such as GamePro) for its "beautiful Disney graphics". However, it ultimately struggled to stand out in a market that had by that point oversaturated with 2D platformers.
Now, though, the game is being given another chance to shine, thanks to BillyTime! Games (the creator of patches for Hudson Soft's Inspector Gadget, Sega's Ghostbusters, and Ocean's Jurassic Park 2: The Chaos Continues), who has recently set out to refine and "retoon" the Super Nintendo title, to make it appeal to even more players. He has introduced a bunch of new tweaks to the game, including the ability to upgrade Bonker's dash — something which can be performed by hitting certain level milestones by collecting badges and levelling up your bomb count.
Here is the list of features you can expect from the hack:
- First Boss has slightly less health
- Collector boss has slightly less health
- Players start with 5 lives instead of 3
- Players receive a free bomb when leveling up
- Upgradeable Dash
You can grab the patch now from the ROM Hack Plaza.