ROSS’S GAME DUNGEON: HARRY BUSTER

As a german, I might be able to shed some light on why this game was made - besides being an advertisement for Deutsche Telekom (the mother company of T-Online and T-Mobile) with just one word:

Moorhuhn.

Also known as "Crazy Chicken" in some of its english releases (others kept the Moorhuhn name instead and a lot never left Germany)

Your own research did seem to lead you to a wiki of that game, according to the URL at the bottom, but that's the reason, overly simplified.

To go into a bit more detail, in 1999 the original "Moorhuhn Jagd" came out as a free game where the goal was to just shoot chicken for two minutes for a high score. It was free and quite a viral success with adults.

Then they made a few sequels: Moorhuhn 2, Moorhuhn Winter Edition (basically MH2 again but in Winter and some new gimmicks), Moorhuhn 3. All in 2000 and 2001. Those were also free, but had also paid versions, and the series was still quite a success in Germany.

Then in 2001, they released a Kart Racer. Like Mario Kart. Except Moorhuhn. And they started to use a more Cartoony artstyle. Came in three version. XS (free) with two racers and three tracks, XL and XXL - last one was basically the full version.

Then came Moorhuhn X, the fourth "main" game fully going into the new Artstyle and being paid only for like 10€. This one also happens to be on Steam, of all things: https://store.steampowered.com/app/340120/Moorhuhn_Crazy_Chicken

They were more and more games, with a lot of genres, over the years. Total of three racing games, strategy, point-and-click, platformer... The most recent of these came out in 2018! Some of them are on Steam, usually those that had international releases.

And because the gaming industry is gaming industry, obviously there were going to be rip-offs and copies of Moorhuhn in the early days. Like "Revenge of the Swamp Chicken", "Chicken Shoot" and, finally coming to this game, Harry Buster.

So, that hopefully answers your question why this game exists: An attempt at a cash grab when a different series was popular. Except that other series thrived while Harry Buster was just a bust.

This episode will be my Thanksgiving special for today.

ITS ABOUT VULTURE CAPITALISM I GEDDIT!

....Still have no idea what that has to do with T-Online. Did they have some hand in the stock market back then?

You are supposed to hit the 1000 points sign. (2:05 in the video).

I'd forgotten all about the Moorhuhn games, there's a ton of them.

And I think they all use those weird pre-rendered 3D sprites.

The karaoke song was pretty fun, the only other game I can remember with one of those in the beginning is Freddy Pharkas.

I am danielsangeo

I'll never get this song out of my head

I'll always listen to that song

My name is danielsangeo.

(Subs up!)

I played the Moorhuhn games a lot as a kid and actually thought this was a legitimate offshoot of that franchise but apparently it's just a ripoff. Probably would have fooled me back in the day as well if I were old enough to buy games by myself at the time and if I lived just one country further east.

The original Moorhuhn was also an advertisement game at first. These guys ripped off an advertisement game for their advertisement game.

As for who would play this: In the early 00s Moorhuhn was THE casual game over here. "Made in Germany" was a huge selling point before gaming went mainstream, got you good ratings and coverage in gaming magazines despite being at least 5 years behind state of the art by American standards (that's the deal with all these weird German games) and Germans were addicted to clicking on swamp chickens like others to Minesweeper. As hard as it is to believe, otherwise sane adults actually bought this over and over.

On 11/28/2019 at 6:31 PM, Mrekalis said:

ITS ABOUT VULTURE CAPITALISM I GEDDIT!

 

....Still have no idea what that has to do with T-Online. Did they have some hand in the stock market back then?

They run an AOL/MSN style internet portal, this was for their finance/business news site.

20 hours ago, drdaxxy said:

Germans were addicted to clicking on swamp chickens like others to Minesweeper. As hard as it is to believe, otherwise sane adults actually bought this over and over.

So basically like Angry Birds.