Teddy Boy Blues Cheats & Cheat Codes

Teddy Boy Blues is an arcade platformer developed by Sega in 1985. Nowadays, of course, Sega is primarily known for the iconic Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. This is a series of platformers that famously rivals even Super Mario Bros in popularity. The beloved speed demon got his debut in 1991, on the Sega Genesis. Before he showed up, though, the developer was cutting its teeth on arcade games like Teddy Boy Blues. This strange little platformer is a far cry from the big-budget Sonic games being released today, which have even inspired a movie franchise featuring Jim Carrey. But if you’re interested in exploring the roots of one of the biggest companies in video gaming, it’s still worthy of a closer look.

Teddy Boy Blues Premise

The inspiration for Teddy Boy Blues makes it a particularly unique title, even in the eclectic world of early arcade games. The game is based on a popular 1985 song of the same name, written and performed by Yoko Ishino. An instrumental version of the song plays during gameplay. Furthermore, you can even see an animated rendition of the performer on the title screen and during bonus rounds. While the song is a tragic tale of unrequited love, the actual substance of the game takes a considerably different approach.

In Teddy Boy Blues you play as a young boy with a gun. This child must traverse endlessly repeating levels filled with dice. These dice, in turn, are full of enemies who shrink when you shoot them. Once they’ve been sufficiently reduced in size, you have to collect them quickly. Otherwise, the insects will morph into insects and eat away at your time limit bar. In addition to this time constraint, the protagonist has lives that go down if you touch an enemy. There are 50 levels which the game will repeat infinitely until you lose. There are also bonus rounds sprinkled throughout to give the child a bit of a break from the standard gameplay.

Teddy Boy Blues Main Characters

As a simple arcade platformer, Teddy Boy Blues doesn’t really have any traditional characters to speak of. The main protagonist doesn’t even officially have a name. Theoretically, you could call him Teddy Boy, but that’d be a fan name if anything. While Yoko Ishino does appear from time to time in the game, she’s present more for cross-promotion purposes than for anything related to the storyline. With an infinitely repeating series of levels, Teddy Boy Blues is entirely more focused on gameplay content than on the story. To that end, there aren’t any characters worth listing here.

Teddy Boy Blues Titles in the Series

While Teddy Boy Blues is officially a standalone title, it was re-released in Brazil under a completely different name. Geraldinho is a 1995 release from Tectoy, which retools the entire game and replaces the unnamed protagonist with the titular Geraldinho. This character comes from a popular Brazilian comic strip of the same name. While most of the gameplay content from Teddy Boy Blues is preserved, Geraldinho does make one interesting change. It gives the player five lives instead of three, making it a slightly more forgiving experience. If you happen to enjoy Brazilian comic strips more than popular Japanese songs from the 80s, it might be worth seeking out Geraldinho instead.

Teddy Boy Blues Cheat Codes

You can open a cheat menu in the console versions of Teddy Boy Blues by pressing up, down, left, and right on the control pad. Unfortunately, once you’ve opened this menu, there’s really not much you can do with it. Pretty much the only cheat available is a level select, which will let you skip around the game at your leisure. With the aforementioned cheat menu open, press up, down eight times, and button I in order to select whichever level you’d like. This cheat comes courtesy of GameFAQs. With such a simple game, there’s really not much room for more involved cheats. One of the best ways to master a game like this is just to practice.

Teddy Boy Blues Cheats FAQ

How many levels are there in Teddy Boy Blues? The game features fifty distinct levels, but these will repeat once you clear all of them. There’s a level counter that goes up to 99, but the game will continue past this point. There is no known end to the game, and if you’re skilled enough, you could theoretically play forever. Of course, this theory doesn’t take into account how many times one would be willing to play the same fifty levels over and over again without stopping.

The image featured at the top of this post is ©Title screen from Teddy Boy Blues.