MTV’s Beavis and Butt-Head: The Game (1994, Genesis) by Radical Entertainment

Current To The Show Leaderboard (speedrun.com)

GAMES FROM THIS EPISODE OF AVGN:
–MTV’s Beavis and Butt-Head: The Game (Genesis)
-MTV’s Beavis and Butt-Head: The Game (SNES)

(Scroll down to the bottom of this review if you’d like to see my single-player “On the Stage” ending, as well as Gruntiatus’ and my own “On the Stage” co-op speedrun.)

Gruntiatus, a good friend of mine, has been at my side for at least half the AVGN Trials.  Helping me through a tough game in Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, it was a real treat to be able to team up with him to tackle Beavis and Butt-Head, a 1994 platformer/puzzle game by Radical Entertainment and Viacom.  This game has all the elements of a good game hidden in a turd, and learning the speedrun definitely helped   Far from perfect, this game does a great job at capturing the show’s humor and style, even if it has a HELL of a learning curve to go along with it.

You play as the titular duo, and you must retrieve the pieces of your GWAR concert tickets from various levels.  Casually, the solutions to getting these tickets back are absolutely cryptic to the point of being nearly impossible without a guide or walkthrough.  Combined with the fact that any death, ANY death, will cause a game over, meaning you had better get passwords often!  Luckily, the game has killer music and colorful, well-animated graphics to go along with nice controls, albeit a confusing menu system makes playing a bit more cumbersome than it needs to be.  And that’s the main theme of this game; the core is there for a great game, but it’s messed up by things that were obviously choices made intentionally by the developers.  Adding extra lives, more weapons or health refills, or making the difficult stretches a bit easier would’ve turned this into a much more competent game for causal players.

The speedrun abuses the games’ own rules to make things easier, with i-frame abusing all over the place, and a fun damage avoid using character swaps.  However, in the 2-player speedrun, you cannot do this, and you happen to have much more difficulty handling your health (in the 1-player run, the other character does not take damage, while in the 2-player run they do).  In other words, it’s much more difficult and dangerous, and the speed tech isn’t as easy to abuse.  That said, the routing options here are incredible, and the strats for getting through make it very satisfying to do so, even if this game is no walk in the park to learn.

Gruntiatus (twitch.tv/gruntiatus) was a wonderful partner to learn this with, and made every step a blast.  I was very afraid of this game going in, and we worked well together, pushing through the difficulties as a tandem.  I will say, if you have an adept speedrun partner to team with you for this game, the two-player run IS a fun one to learn, and you won’t regret it.  If not… well, this sucks.