Awesome Possum... Kicks Dr. Machino's Butt

Awesome Possum... Kicks Dr. Machino's Butt is a platform game released in 1993 for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis by Tengen. The game is part of the early 1990s mascot-based platformer trend started by Sonic the Hedgehog.

Story
The evil scientist Dr. Machino has created an army of robots and is using them to destroy the environment, so Awesome Possum arrives to stop his fiendish plans.

Why It's Not So Awesome

 * 1) The game is very clearly a Sonic the Hedgehog rip-off.
 * 2) Awesome Possum, the main character of the game, has a lot of voiceovers, which easily get annoying and play all the time. Thankfully however, they can be disabled.
 * 3) *The protagonist/mascot is also quite terrible (much worse than Bubsy) because of his over-the-top attempts at being cool. According to the box, his given name is actually and literally Awesome.
 * 4) Awful stage design. For example, in the first level, it seems made with dry poop, instead of earth, in the trees it looks like rotten chocolates and the leaves look like snot, another example is The Sea Caverns, it looks like vomit and the water looks like an energy drink with blueberry flavor. Not only that, but the stages are just a random mishmash of things without any thought put into it.
 * 5) Despite a good variety of enemies, they all follow the same pattern of walking left and right, including bosses.
 * 6) Enemies take a lot of damage before they are defeated.
 * 7) Choppy and unstable frame rate that skips frames to try to hide that there are actually less animations than intended, also due to how ugly it is, it can become a bit unplayable.
 * 8) Sound recycling, example is how the defeated enemies sound effect is rip straight out of Sonic Spinball.
 * 9) Ugly graphics.
 * 10) Environmental lessons shoehorned into the game.
 * 11) In a way, hypocrisy: if this game was made to promote saving the environment, the cartridge and manual and boxes are not eco-friendly.
 * 12) Terrible soundtrack.
 * 13) Dr. Machino, the villain of the game, is just a poor man's version of Dr. Robotnik/Eggman. The sad thing is, he's the only likable character in the game since he tells Awesome Possum that he's not so awesome, which is true.
 * 14) When they hit you, the facial faces (which are above) are very disturbing.
 * 15) *To make matters worse, the Game Over screen is also very disturbing. As you see the grave of the deceased titular character in a dumpster, around the rotting environment. Instead of the transition color being black as when you're transitioning to the next part of the game, it turns green when transitioning to this screen, upping the disturbing factor.
 * 16) **This is also turned up to eleven in the beta version, as the transition color to the Game Over screen is red, instead of being green in the final/released version.
 * 17) In the beta version of the game, Awesome Possum's face in your health bar slowly  DECAYS  into a skeleton as you lose a bar in your health, as opposed to just gradually becoming tired as you lose a bar and eventually have X eyes as you lost the last bar of your health, in the final/released version.
 * 18) *The death animation in the beta version of this game is also disturbing, as Awesome rots into a skeleton.
 * 19) Some of the damage inflicted by enemies don't make sense, such as a submarine itself dealing more damage than the missiles that it fires.
 * 20) Spotty collision detection. You could be literally walking underneath an electric eel which still manages to hit you. Certain enemies require you to land right on top of them otherwise the game thinks they hit you.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Players get to actually and literally kick Dr. Machino in the butt at the end, so the game's title doesn't lie at least.
 * 2) The singing in the title screen of the game is very catchy to sing along with and the most memorable part of the game.
 * 3) Awesome can ride on animal buddies such as a bee, a swan and a rhinoceros, predating Donkey Kong Country. Should those animals go off-screen, they will respawn the next time they are on screen.
 * 4) You can pause the game, press any direction on the D-pad and return to the previous checkpoint you touched.
 * 5) Thankfully, you can disable Awesome's voice.

Videos
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