This game is strictly a platformer in the vein of Mega Man only with four stages to pick with rather than six like the first game or eight like its sequels.
Bucky O'Hare for the NES consists of:
- Action Bomb: The spiders on the tree in the Green Planet explode into bullets that travel in eight different directions unless you shoot them first.
- Adaptational Wimp: The Toadborg, while serving as The Dragon in the show, here is the boss of the Green Planet, the easiest of the four worlds you can choose from. His attack patterns are quite predictable and avoidable, and he's nowhere near the Knight of Cerebus who delivered the heroes' first defeat.
- Anti-Frustration Features: For quite a tough NES game, the game has a very lenient checkpoint system. Getting a Game Over sets you at the last section you have reached and you have infinite continues.
- All There in the Manual: Series antagonist K.O.M.P.L.E.X., despite not appearing in the game, was the one to to send the Toad Air Marshal to kidnap most of the heroes and take them across different planets.
- Attack Its Weak Point:
- The Red Planet boss requires you to shoot the Toad operating the machine whenever it opens up to reveal him. Shots that hit any other part of the boss will harmlessly bounce off.
- The Yellow Planet's boss needs to be shot in the eye to be damaged. Before you can attack the eye, however, you must destroy both of the weapons on the top and middle of the boss, as well as the red satellite dish.
- The boss at the end of the Salvage Chute first requires you to destroy the panel on its underside between the legs, then to finish it off, you have to shoot at the Toad on top.
- The Mother Ship core at the end of the Center of the Magma Tanker requires you to destroy the lasers on the top and bottom, then break through the glass to shoot the core in the center.
- Boss Arena Urgency: The battle with Al Negator on the Blue Planet takes place in a room with both rising green slime, and a line of spikes on the ceiling. Whenever the slime gets high enough, he fires a beam at it that freezes it solid, moving the fight closer to the spikes, and if you fight him for too long, you could eventually end up jumping into the spikes for an instant death.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: In the Cell, before Bucky can save Jenny, Willy, and Deadeye, the Toad Air Marshal comes in and hits them with a mind-control beam, sending them to attack Bucky and forcing him to beat them in a boss fight before they can rejoin the crew.
- Charged Attack:
- Jenny's special move is an orb of psychic energy that she must charge before she can use it. It gets larger the more she charges it, and once she releases it, she can move it freely around the screen and deal constant damage to any targets as long as they are overlapping.
- Willy's special move allows him to charge up his laser for one super-powerful shot.
- Damsel in Distress: Jenny was one of the four crewmates captured and is held captive on the Blue Plant.
- Distressed Dude: Blinky, Deadeye, and Willy get snatched by the toads and each of them are held captive on the green, red, and yellow planets respectively.
- Final Boss: The Toad Air Marshal appears as the game's final threat where he chases down the heroes when they try to escape.
- Green Hill Zone: The Green Planet is covered in forests and woodlands. There's even one giant tree you have to climb in act 2. It's also not only the easiest level in the game, with the fewest acts and fewest lethal hazards, but the one the game itself encourages you to play first, as the character you save from it is required to clear the Blue Planet, and it's the level that the cursor defaults to when you first see the map screen.
- Heart Container: The L hearts not only refill your life bar, but increase its maximum level by a few points. If you get a Game Over and choose to continue, it will be reduced to its default length.
- The Heavy: As K.O.M.P.L.E.X. does not appear in the game but is still mentioned in the manual, it's the Toad Air Marshal who carries out the order to capture Bucky's crewmates.
- In a Single Bound: Bucky's special ability allows him to charge up power before releasing it in one super-high jump.
- Lethal Lava Land: The Red Planet is a world cluttered with lava pits and volcanoes across the globe.
- No Name Given: None of the four planets were ever named in the game.
- One-Hit Kill: Despite the fact that the player has a life bar, there are many hazards throughout the game that will kill you instantly on contact. This is taken one step further in the secret HARD! mode, where absolutely everything kills your character in one hit.
- Password Save: You receive a five-digit password every time you clear a stage, and can enter it at the title screen to start from the last stage you played.
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The Blue Planet is a world entirely frozen in ice, rendering it a frigid wasteland.
- Space Zone: The Yellow Planet, unlike the rest, has no established biome, and in its later acts, moves into more open space, with you needing to jump across Toad ships while avoiding asteroids, or riding asteroids between a series of very small planetoids.
- Spread Shot: Deadeye's gun has shorter range than the other characters, but the trade off is that he fires three bullets at once, which spread out in a triangle shape, allowing him to cover more ground.
- Super Drowning Skills: Falling into the water at any point is instant death for any of the characters.
- Super-Strength: In his boss fight, Toadborg make boulders larger than himself fall from above, catches them, holds them over his head, and tosses them at you. Getting crushed underneath one of these boulders is enough to instantly kill you.
- Unexpected Shmup Level: The final stage ditches the platforming present throughout the rest of the game as the heroes board the Toad Croaker and fly it out of the exploding Toad Mother Ship. The game turns into an auto-scrolling shoot-em-up, though the character switching mechanics are still present.
- Unwinnable by Design: The Blue Planet is impossible to complete unless you have cleared the Green Planet first, as there are some ice blocks that cannot be broken through without Blinky's weapon. If you go to the Blue Planet without him, you will need to lose all your lives and exit the stage before you can try again.
