Putt-Putt & Pep's Balloon-o-Rama

Putt-Putt & Pep's Balloon-o-Rama
Developer: Humongous Entertainment Publishers: Humongous Entertainment, Ravensburger Interactive (DE) Platforms: Windows, Mac OS Classic Released in US: 1996 This game has unused graphics. This game has unused text. This game has debugging material. This game has a hidden level select.

In Putt-Putt & Pep's Balloon-o-Rama, Pep accidentally lets go of the balloons he and Putt-Putt were holding, and they have to get them back by... popping them in the style of Breakout?

It's actually not that bad... for the first 30 or so levels. Much like Backyard Baseball, it suffers from Humongous Arcade Syndrome – it's way too long and too repetitive. It's not the worst case, but it's pretty hard to say that anyone who played this game made it through all one hundred twenty levels.

Unused Subtitles

As with just about every Humongous game ever, this game features subtitles that can only be activated either through ScummVM or by adding

TextOn=1

to hegames.ini.

(Source: ScummVM Wiki)

In-House Level Editor

What's that, you say, this game already had a level editor? Yes, but it's a kid-friendly editor and is rather limiting. There is a much more feature-packed level editor buried in the code. It can be accessed by two methods: typing "room 5" in ScummVM's debugger, or adding

RhettCool=1

to hegames.ini and pressing E at any point during gameplay.

(Source: Archived Humongous Entertainment site)

The editor is extremely simple to use once you know everything. Click on any of the balloons below to select them, and use the left click to place them on the grid. Right click on them to remove them. There is a limit to how many balloons you can have, but it is way higher than how many you can have in the kid level editor. The balloon on the left controls the colors: left click to change the primary color, and right click to change its secondary color (the secondary color is the one used for things like paint buckets and balloons within balloons).

The musical note toggles the background music on or off in the editor. It does not change the music though.

back-drop changes the background of the level and its music.

demo seems to only ever take you to the game's official first level, and resets it after you beat it.

test level allows you to play the level you just made. You get ten lives while testing.

save and load were likely used in the development process to save and load any levels the developers made. Clicking either one prompts the message "File for SAVING/LOADING: [blank]", and saves or loads (respectively) the level.

NORM changes the layers of balloons that are currently selected, if you want your level to have regenerating balloons. The other layers are DELAY and REG1-5. NORM is the layer which balloons are already spawned in when the level starts, and REG1-5 are up to five layers which you might want regenerating balloons on. For regenerating balloons to work, you must first select the DELAY layer and click on the designated spot where you will want balloons to regenerate; it will then prompt you to set a 1-60 second delay. This is how long it will be when a balloon is popped before another comes up in its place. Do note that if you place a regenerating balloon on a spot where there aren't any spawned, the timer is a bit delayed before it actually starts to count when a level starts. Then, on the REG layers, place a balloon in the same spot where you placed the delay, in ascending layer order.

The tiles on the left side of the screen are for bonus spaceships and Percival the pig (the one who drops bowling balls on you). You may only have one bonus ship per level, but you can have all the Percivals you want if that's what you desire.

Unused Functionalities

With most items that would be illogical to place on the regenerating layer, the in-house level editor prevents you from doing so, such as with pinwheels, paint buckets, and bumpers. However, it is possible to place alien spaceships from the bonus levels on the regenerating layer, even though none of the bonus levels across the entire game use them. They do not have any proper animation; instead they simply pop up with a regular solid colored balloon inflating behind them before disappearing. They do function as intended, though.

Special Names

Three special names exist in this game to function as "level select" codes. FROGBOY and TOADGIRL allow the player to not only pick between every level, but also net every powerup and grant invincibility – if Pep hits the ground, he just bounces back up. Additionally, entering HUMO alone will only grant a level select with no cheats, but it can be followed with a combination of any of these letters:

Letter	Ability
S	Super-Pep powerup
G	Gravity Powerup
B	Electro-Boots powerup
L	Limo Putt-Putt powerup
D	Can't Drop Pep powerup

For example, if you type the name as "HUMOSG", you will have the cape and the helmet.

(Source: Archived Humongous Entertainment site)