Bully

***Bully***, also known as ***Canis Canem Edit***, is a third person action-adventure video game released by Rockstar Vancouver for the PlayStation 2 on October 17, 2006 in the United States, and October 25, 2006 in the United Kingdom. An Xbox version was originally planned, but was cancelled for undisclosed reasons. The game was re-released with enhanced graphics, new features and characters as ***Bully: Scholarship Edition*** on March 4, 2008 for the Wii and Xbox 360 and October 24, 2008 on the PC. The PlayStation 2 version of the game is also available in the United States as a special edition that includes a limited edition comic book and a dodgeball of the same style as the ones used in the game, with the word *Bully* embossed on it.

On December 18, 2012, Bully has been re-released on the *PS2 Classics* for the PlayStation 3 in the PlayStation Store. As of March 22, 2016, was later released an downloadable enhanced PlayStation 2 classics version for the PlayStation 4, with enhanced framerate and graphic resolution.

## Gameplay

*Bully* is an open world sandbox action-adventure game set in a school environment. The player takes control of a 15 year old teenage rebel James "Jimmy" Hopkins, who from the opening cutscene is revealed to be a difficult student with a turbulent background. The game concerns the events that follow Jimmy being dropped off at Bullworth Academy, a fictional boarding school in New England. The player is free to explore the school campus and town, or to complete the main missions. The game makes extensive use of minigames. Some are used to earn money, others to improve Jimmy's abilities.

School classes themselves are done in the form of minigames, broken into five levels of increasing difficulty. English, for example, is a word scramble minigame, and as Jimmy completes the level, he learns to apologize to bullies, deliver better taunts, apologize to Prefects and finally to apologize to the police.

Jimmy has a multitude of weapons available, although they tend to run along the lines of things a school boy might actually attain, such as slingshots, bags of marbles, stink bombs, and later in the game, a bottle rocket launcher and a spud cannon. He also has an assortment of vehicles to operate — mainly bicycles with different abilities, but also a moped, a go-kart, a skateboard and on rare occasions, a lawn mower.

## Setting

The game takes place at Bullworth Academy, a fictional independent boarding school in the New England area of the United States. Jimmy ends up enrolled in the school when his newly married mother and fifth stepfather go on a year-long honeymoon cruise. The school is located in the also fictional town of Bullworth, which resembles Connecticut (this would also explain the high prevalence of 'Old money' and 'Nouveau Riche' influences). The school itself is a classical neo-gothic design and is similar to many other public schools and colleges in the United Kingdom and New England, in particular Fettes College in Edinburgh.

### Time

The timeline of the game is vastly unclear. Design influences (of cars and architecture) point to a possible setting in the 1980s or 1990s, but there are also other objects hinting at a setting in 2006, 2007 or 2008.

* A reference to the year being 1992-1995 as the setting can be seen in one of the various arcade machine minigames
* School sports flags show the school as champions as recently as 1998-1999.
* On their website they say it is fall 2006.
* A poster can be seen in the Jock Clubhouse that dates to 2005, and another to 2007.
* The year 2007 can be seen on notices on the wall of the Boys' Dorm.
* Mr Galloway alludes to surfing "dubious sites" on the internet. Additionally, two desktop computers that resemble computers seen in the 90`s and early 2000`s can be found in the basement bedroom of Dragon's Wing Comics.
* In contrast to the above, the School Library has a couple of vintage, 70s-80's-esque monochrome-screen computers.
* A line of Bryce Montrose's dialogue suggests that the game specifically takes place after the '90s.

Because of the contradicting factors, it is quite impossible to pin the game as taking place in a specific era. This was specifically intended by the developers, who wanted to create a timeless atmosphere to allow players to relate the game with their own days in school.

## Plot summary

* Chapter 1: Making New Friends and Enemies: Jimmy comes to Bullworth Academy and immediately runs into trouble with the Bullies.
* Chapter 2: Rich Kid Blues: Jimmy is now more popular, but he must deal with the spoiled Preppies.
* Chapter 3: Love Makes the World Go Around: Jimmy gets mixed in with the love affairs of Johnny Vincent, leader of the Greasers, and his girlfriend Lola Lombardi.
* Chapter 4: A Healthy Mind is a Healthy Body and Other Lies: Jimmy decides to take on the Jocks, but he first needs to convince the Nerds to help him.
* Chapter 5: The Fall and Rise of Jimmy Hopkins, Aged 15: Jimmy, after briefly enjoying his power as king of Bullworth Academy, is expelled. He has to clear his name and get re-enrolled back into the Academy while regaining control of the cliques.
* Chapter 6: Endless Summer: Jimmy can tie up any loose ends, such as finishing races, finding collectibles, etc.

## Characters

*See Characters*
The game focuses on Bullworth's newest student, Jimmy Hopkins. As he advances through his academic career at Bullworth Academy, he may interact with the school's students and teachers, as well as people from the neighboring districts, many of whom will give him errands to complete. He is greeted by Gary Smith, a scheming, unstable sociopath and Pete Kowalski, a shy student who has yet to make any friends. Jimmy has to navigate his way through the five cliques at the school — the Bullies, Nerds, Preppies, Greasers and Jocks — as well as the Townie kids, the school faculty and all the other adult townsfolk. Unlike other games from Rockstar, no two characters in *Bully* are the same, and every character has their own name, personality, and appearance.

Most of the voice actors of the teenagers and kids were in their late teens and early twenties to make the game's dialogue feel as realistic as possible.

### Voice Acting

The game's voice cast are made mostly of 'off-the-street' actors and actresses, some of which had prior roles in other Rockstar titles like *Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas*, or credits in television programmes. Some of them went on to take on other acting roles, while *Bully* remains the only role for others.

## Development

Bully possibly started development around 2003 by Rockstar Vancouver when they were known as Barking Dog Studios. When they were purchased by Rockstar Games, development stepped up further. Many very low quality beta models of characters can be found within the game files from a very early version of the game.
Early information released by Take-Two Interactive seemed to indicate that the player would be taking the role of a bully, and screenshots printed in *Electronic Gaming Monthly* showed the player-controlled antagonist administering a swirlie and throwing a punch at another student. The game uses an advanced *Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas* engine through Renderware. Rockstar Vancouver also decided to make every student in the school have a unique appearance and, within programming limitations, personality. While many features had been completely new, there are a considerable amount of content and features recycled from *Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas* such as certain game mechanics, some in-game models including cars, sounds and a few other miscellaneous details.

## Reception

**Reviews**
 Game Rankings
 GameStats
 Metacritic
 Metacritic (User Score)

*Bully* has received generally positive reviews from critics. The game received ratings of 8.9/10 from IGN, 9.0/10 from Games Radar, a perfect 10/10 from 1UP.com, 8.7/10 from GameSpot, 5/5 from JIVE Magazine, 8.75/10 from VGRC.net, a 5/5 from X-Play, and made the Top 10 Games of '06 in *PlayStation Magazine*. *Canis Canem Edit* also got 9/10 from *OPS2* Magazine. Critics generally praised the game's storyline, while they complained about particular stealth missions, as well as the camera. Critics also noted that the game is substantially easier than veterans of the *Grand Theft Auto* series (Rockstar's flagship titles) would expect.

### Awards

* Won IGN's award for Best PlayStation 2 Action Game.
* Won GameSpot's award for Best Original Music.
* Finalist for GameSpot's Game of the Year 2006
* Gaming Target - 52 Games We'll Still Be Playing From 2006 selection
* Came in top ten of best PlayStation 2 game of the year.
* Became number #43 in the top 100 games of all time in IGN.

### Reception

Both versions of the game generally received positive reviews with IGN giving the Wii version an 8/10, while the Xbox 360 version received 8.7/10. 1up.com gave the Wii version an A grade.

The Xbox 360 version of *Bully: Scholarship Edition* was found to be unstable on some players' consoles, resulting in glitches, crashes and performance issues. Rockstar have promised to have a patch addressing these issues by the week of March 10, 2008. On Thursday March 20th, a patch was released via Xbox Live, but some initial reports claim to have continued or worsened problems. GameSpot, a game review website which bases its reviews on the initial public release, took the glitches into account and marked the 360 version of the *Scholarship Edition* down to a 7/10, a full point lower than the Wii version, which received an 8.

## Sequel

*Main article: Bully 2*
While not yet confirmed, there have been many hints made by Rockstar Games that a sequel would be released. Dan Houser said in 2012 that after Max Payne 3, Bully 2 was a possibility. In July 2013, Rockstar Games filed trademark renewals for the franchise sparking more rumors of the development to the game.
## See also

* Bully Trivia
* Myths vs Facts

## References

1. ↑ Bully SE All Bryce Montrose Quotes (timestamp 1:05)

## External links

* Official *Bully* Homepage
* Official Canis Canem Edit Homepage
* Press Release by Take Two Interactive
* Website with videos of missions in Bully and Bully: SE
* BBC News article about the controversy
* Youth Council of Ireland wants boycott of “shocking" game
* Information about the Bully Soundtrack album, composed by Shawn Lee
* Voices and Choices: A Conversation with Shawn Lee