Armadillo Trivia

[Benny the Miraj]

Hey guys. This is my first time posting on VGFacts' forums. At first I didn't trust this site, but I've decided to discard my criticisms and give it a chance.

Anyways, Armadillo is a NES/Famicom game published by IGS. It has a very Mario-ish feel to it (to the point where bootleggers made a bootleg version dubbed "Mario IV"). It features Billy the Shell on a quest across America to defeat Fatadillo and his Black Bean Gang and rescue Shella, Billy's girlfriend.

Armadillo runs a total of eight worlds. All the bosses except for the fourth and eighth are animals in classy white tuxedos whom wield some type of gun. In order, they are: Snake, Chicken, Pig, Fox, Hippo, and Vulture (the last one fires bullets from its mouth). In-between the Pig and Fox there is the giant robot; Mecha Fatadillo, and the final boss is Fatadillo himself.

However, while digging through the game files, I came across this.

This is a sprite for an unused Rabbit boss, possibly intended to be World 4's original boss until being replaced with Mecha Fatadillo. I ripped him directly from YY-CHR, and assembled his standard and damaged sprites.

Armadillo also was compatible with an accessory only released in Japan, the Battle Box. This utility allows the game and high scores to be saved/loaded, and unlocks "Stone Armadillo" mode. No footage or screens of Stone Armadillo mode exist, but to my knowledge, it probably made Billy heavier, making him not be able to jump as high and requiring extra effort to make it up some ledges or slopes.

A sequel was once planned, dubbed "Armadillo 2", but was canceled, despite some promotional flyers for the game being released. From what was shown, Billy's sprite would have been more accurate to his artwork used on the box art and such, and one of the enemies, the Hedgehog, was going to become a new ally, presumably controlled by the second player instead of the green Billy seen in the first game. Diamonds would have been used as a form of currency.

Similarly, a Game Boy spinoff "Armadillo Gaiden" was also in the works, but later got re-branded into "Ultraman Ball". Some of the traits Armadillo Gaiden would have used still remain, such as freeing the alien UFO's (which relate to the martian often seen in Armadillo 1)

That's all I really have to say for Armadillo.

I can guess the reason it was not released in the states was due to the overall casino/gambling motif in the game. The game has you collecting dice, visiting bars and casinos and such, and it might have gone too far with the motif.

...That's only a guess, though. Frankly though, I've played it on an emulator, and Americans weren't really missing much. It's not so much a bad game, but it's definitely average at best.

Edit: Fatadillo has got to be the least threatening video game antagonist of all time. He wears GLASSES for crying out loud.