Now that we’ve protected the Earth with Cosmo Gang the Video (with almost 20 challengers — thank you all!), let’s head to the Aniverse to face the Toad Empire with the fourth game of our first One Credit Challenge season: Bucky O’Hare.

Bucky O’Hare is a hybrid game mixing beat’em up and run and gun gameplay, released in 1992 and developed and published by Konami. It appeared in arcades on the Konami system in September 1992 in Japan, then in the United States. The game is based on the animated TV series "Bucky O’Hare and the Toad Wars" from 1991, and even features the original voice actors from the show in its cutscenes.

Universe & atmosphere

In this game, you play as one of the four crew members of the Righteous Indignation: Bucky O’Hare (the heroic rabbit captain), Jenny (a telepathic “Aldebaran cat”), Dead-Eye Duck (a four-armed duck), or Blinky (a one-eyed android). Their mission: to stop the Toad Empire invading the planets of the Aniverse and enslaving their populations, by destroying KOMPLEX, the evil computer program that controls the empire, and freeing the “Interplanetary Life Force.” The colorful, cartoon universe stays faithful to the series, with dynamic animations and a fun space opera atmosphere.

Gameplay & mechanics

The gameplay mixes action and shooting: unlike classic beat’em ups, each character is equipped with a laser gun as their main weapon, while also being able to perform melee attacks and jumps. Each hero also has a limited number of smart bombs to eliminate multiple enemies at once. Weapon and health power-ups appear occasionally through glowing “doors.”

The game features 8 stages across various environments: Planet Warren, Planet Punk, Climate Converter, Asteroid Belt, Planet Rat, Mothership, Toad Star, and finally the Planet Life Force. The perspective changes between stages — sometimes classic side scrolling, sometimes forced isometric view, or vertical scrolling. Some levels even include jetpack sequences or rides on Toad Croakers (hover bikes). A boss awaits at the end of each stage, with KOMPLEX as the three-phase final boss.

The game supports up to 4 players in co-op, making the experience even more intense. Upon release, RePlay ranked Bucky O’Hare as the third most popular arcade game at the time.

🏆 Challenge rules

Your goal is to achieve the best score in a single credit.
The challenge runs from October 16 to 31 at 11:59 PM.
You have as many attempts as you like.

📢 How to participate

1. Launch the game (rom "bucky.zip")
2. Play and try to beat the best score
3. Take a screenshot or a photo of your final score
4. Share your score on the Discord channel #challenges with your username and score

⚖️ Rules to respect

To ensure fairness:

• The score must be achieved in a single credit, without save states, rewind, cheats, or auto-fire (unless included in the game)
• Gentlemen’s agreement: using glitches to artificially boost your score is also forbidden

🎁 Rewards and fair play

The challenge’s goal is above all to discover games, share tips, and have fun, all in a friendly competitive spirit.

• The winner will get a game key (GOG, Steam, etc.) to choose from a list of about 100 titles
• If you’ve already won a challenge in the past three months, the reward goes to the next player 🥇🥈🥉
• Your ranking will be added to the One Credit Challenge leaderboard
• The champion of the first season will win either a free RGB Dual 2 or a one-year Recalbox Patreon subscription

Good luck everyone, and may the best score win!