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Richard Scarry's Busytown (1999)

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Revision as of 14:00, 11 July 2020 by PCGamerKC (talk | contribs) (Added taxonomy and an introduction.)
Richard Scarry's Busytown
Richard Scarry's Busytown cover
Developers
Pearson Software
Boston Animation
Publishers
Simon & Schuster
Release dates
Windows 1999
Mac OS (Classic) 1999
Taxonomy
Modes Singleplayer
Pacing Relaxed
Controls Point and select
Genres Educational
Art styles Cartoon
Series The Busy World of Richard Scarry
Richard Scarry's Busytown (1999) on Wikipedia
The Busy World of Richard Scarry
Richard Scarry's Busytown 1993
Richard Scarry's How Things Work in Busytown 1994
Richard Scarry's Busytown (remake) 1999

Richard Scarry's Busytown is a 1999 enhanced remake of the 1993 educational game of the same name, with improved graphics, animation, and voice acting resembling that of The Busy World of Richard Scarry animated TV series, as well as the original songs included.

Key points

No major compatibility issues running the game on modern Windows OSes.
Separate volume controls do not work properly on modern Windows OSes.
The Gas Station activity may not load properly when attempting to play it, although thankfully it doesn't crash the game. Use Windows Compatibility Mode settings (see Issues fixed section).
The Bananas Gorilla activity (and song) of the original 1993 version is excluded from the remake. The Junior Seesaw activity is also removed as it's already been made redundant by the Seesaw.

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
Windows
Mac OS

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>[Note 1]
Mac OS (Classic)

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>[Note 1]
Mac OS (Classic)

Video

Graphics feature State Notes
Widescreen resolution
The game runs at 640x480.
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
Press F12 to switch between fullscreen and windowed.
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anti-aliasing (AA)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
60 FPS and 120+ FPS
The game runs at 8 FPS.
High dynamic range display (HDR)

Input

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Required to play the game.
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support

Audio

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Music is affected by F5 and F6; Sound is affected by F7 and F8.
Do not seem to work properly under a modern Windows OS, as changing either affects all audio, and increasing or decreasing the other option switches the master volume back to whatever the other option's volume was. If Windows Compatibility Mode is used instead, then changing either affects the system's volume instead.
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English

Issues fixed

"Unable to load BTF" error when attempting to play the Gas Station

When trying to play the Gas Station activity, the game stops after a loading screen and an error pops up (not visible when using fullscreen mode) with the message "Unable to load BTF". The game doesn't crash, since pressing Esc or Alt+F4 immediately backs out of any portion of the game back to Busytown, but the Gas Station becomes the only unplayable activity in the game.
Use Windows Compatibility Mode[citation needed]
  1. Go to <path-to-game>.
  2. Open the properties for BusyTown.exe (the game's executable).
  3. Under the Compatibility tab, enable Compatibility mode (tick the box that says "Run this program in compatibility mode for:") and select one of the Windows XP options from the dropdown menu. Note: Do not use either the "Windows 95" or "Windows 98 / Windows Me" options; although this game was made for those OSes, using either setting doesn't fix the problem.
  4. Click "OK" or "Apply" to apply the new settings, then run the game and click on the Gas Station after watching Mayor Fox's unskippable intro. It should load the activity without any problem.

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
DirectDraw 6
ExecutablePPC16-bit 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows
Mac OS (Classic)

Middleware

No middleware information; you can edit this page to add it.

System requirements

Windows
Minimum
Operating system (OS) 95, 98
Processor (CPU) Pentium 133 MHz
System memory (RAM) 32 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD)
Video card (GPU) 640 x 480 16 bit color
DirectX 6.0 compatible
Sound (audio device) Windows compatible sound card
Other 4x CD-ROM drive, Mouse
Mac OS
Minimum
Operating system (OS) 7.5.1
Processor (CPU)
System memory (RAM) 32 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD)
Video card (GPU) 640 x 480 16 bit color
Other 4x CD-ROM drive, Mouse


Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).

References