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The Making Of

Billy Bob the Cactus Blob 1.5: Billy Bob Returns

 

    You've hit the jackpot, people. Other than perhaps the original Billy Bob, this game has more beta stuff than any of the other games. Take a trip with me down memory lane as we take a look at the production of this Phlibbit masterpiece.

    All right, let's start from the beginning. After the original Billy Bob was released, and with all of the reviews and positive comments came in, the natural course of direction led me to create a sequel. So where do I start? Well, I had to start from what I left off with at the end of Billy Bob 1 to keep with continuity. The next adventure was supposed to be about Billy's quest to locate the EVIL other narrator. I thought that was an okay place to start.

    I quickly wrote down all of the shifting thoughts through my head, and came up with this premise:

    "45 thousand bilion years have pased sinse billy bob defeted the evil narrator, kyle 9999.

    Kyle9999 was so evil. every body was happy that billy bob had killed him, that they gave him lots of money. He now has added more rooms to his howse. Being a costume fanatik, Billy Bob also has a shope next to his house called 'Billy Bob's Costuem Zhop'. He also has his personle costumes there too. Lets join him in his search for me, the other narrator..."

and there you have it. I thought the costume shop premise was off to a good start, and I began work shortly thereafter.

       From the start, I was going to integrate the costume shop into the gameplay, and that main storyline. First, I had Billy change into Batblob, and race of to Jethro the Jester's Lair. Well, needless to say, I didn't really feel that this was doing the trick so far, so I scrapped that idea, and decided to use these levels, and the other costume-themed levels, as mini-games to play in the costume shop.

 

 

    I decided to use some of the constructive criticism from the first game. One of the biggest gripes was that the game was too short, and there was no replay value. Well, I made the costume shop into a sort-of 'Mini-Game Hut', where you could go in, and try on costumes, which let you play various mini-games. Sounded good to me.

    Then, I was going to make the adventure mode longer, with actual things to do. Well, the completed game didn't reflect this. The original game's level pattern went something like this: Water Lumpies, boolper boss, trail, mongoose fight, jester fight, tanktor fight, cloud monster fight, and final boss. There was just something missing. It really felt short, and you didn't really do anything but go and kill easy bosses. After this, the game remained in hiatus for about six months.

    During these six months, some interesting events took place. TLONMASTER had sent me his Billy Bob the Cactus Blob 2, and I decided that was a perfectly fine addition to the series. So where would my game take place? Now that there already was a Billy Bob 2, where did this game fit?

    TLON and I thought long and hard. TLON actually wanted to change some parts of the game; none of these, however, made it into the final version, heh. I'll discuss those later. But we decided to call it Billy Bob 2.5: Sequel and a Half.

    

What a perfect name. We figured the game would just take place after Billy Bob 2. TLON wanted to change the story around a bit; instead of getting the costume shop because he beat the narrator, he got it for beating Hickman.

 

  

    

After a long break and throwing out all of TLON's ideas (he was completely oblivious to the whole thing), I thought I may finally have some fresh ideas. And behold, I did! Or...I did, to my knowledge. Anyway, I threw in Cranky's Lab, the Banana boss, Mustache Heck, the Pious Billy level, and the Virtual Boy parody of Billy Bob's Tennis. I thought that rounded off the game pretty well.

    After the main game was completed, I was going to make a Billy Bob 2.5 Second Quest using TLON's updated Billy Bob sprite, in which you had to go around town, and collect items for Billy Bob's get-together. Whoo boy, I'm glad I never finished it. It was too boring, and you can see why.

    

    This screenshot is from TLON's self-titled 'Crazy ConCRAPtion. I have no idea what it's supposed to be, or where it's supposed to go, so here it is.

    

    And now the last thing. After many more hours and hours of thought, I changed the name to Billy Bob 1.5: Billy Bob Returns, because it plays more like Billy Bob 1, and takes place before Billy Bob 2.

    Oh, I'll mention one more thing. While creating the Many Faces of Billy Bob compilation, I needed .gam files of every game to make the compilation work properly. Well, the only .gam version of Billy Bob 1.5 I had was the one that only had the main levels, before I went back and added things like the Pious Billy level. So, I had to go to the .exe, hit 'Print Screen', and copy/paste to get the original graphics back, etc. It was painstakingly difficult. However, by this time, I was a bit more skilled in TGF, so some of these levels (and other older levels) have become more enjoyable, after I added some things to them.

   And that wraps up the trials and tribulations of Billy Bob 1.5: Billy Bob Returns quite nicely, don't you think?