Retro Game of the Day is a daily look back at some of the games we loved (or, not so much) during the formative years. Today's entry is Bonk's Adventure.
Retro Game of the Day! Bonk's Adventure
Bonk's Adventure by Red/Hudson/NEC/your mom for the TurboGrafx-16, released in 1990 as one of its flagship titles.
This little fella here was supposed to be the Turbo's answer to Mario. Preceding Sonic by a decent margin, he would have been the Nintendo Mascot Plumber's first official "rival" - but Bonk never even had a chance!
Not that it is any fault of the game's, anyway. Though he wasn't for everyone, Bonk certainly lived in a colorful world full of prehistoric enemies to quell - back in the day, this was the first viable "character action game" of the platformer style to really try and give Mario a run for his money. I have no idea how it performed in Japan, but the game really fell on deaf ears when released in the US. The TurboGrafx-16 console had a good deal of press coverage when it released the preceding year, but as time went by it quickly lost valuable ground to Nintendo's aging 8-Bit system and Sega's new, "more powerful" 16-Bit Genesis system.
Bonk was a caveman with a huge noggin, good for bashing into foes - what's more, the player could jump around and invert, landing head-first on enemies. You could get some pretty decent momentum (and points) racked up by doing this in succession.
Otherwise, the game was pretty standard fare (I say that a lot, don't I!) Proceed to the level's end, dispatch the boss, wash/rinse/repeat. In Bonk's defense, the bosses were particularly large and colorful, easily dwarfing their 8-Bit counterparts at the time - this game looked (and sounded) quite impressive!
In the end, Bonk lacked the marketability of a game like Sonic (or, of course, Mario) for many reasons. Not a bad game at all, just one which never received a proper chance due to releasing on "that other system" (and don't be mistaken, I love the TurboGrafx-16/PC-Engine!). A flurry of sequels followed, some direct and other indirect (futuristic Bonk the shooter was - Zonk!) and eventually he showed up on the rival consoles (NES, GB, SNES). A nice little game in its day, and one which is still worth unearthing now. In fact, I have been looking for an excuse to finally try out the SNES sequel...!
Read more about:
BlogsYou May Also Like
