Reviews from

in the past


one of the best game boy games! it's balloon fight..but you're on an adventure...!!!!!!

i know me and my sister owned this at one point i dont remember what happened to it

I like this game more then Balloon Fight

Hey, y'all remember Balloon Fight, right? That one early NES game that involves flying around on balloons and popping other peoples' balloons that Nintendo will CONSTANTLY remind you that it existed at one point? Well, did you know that that game apparently got a sequel at one point? Yeah, me neither, but it exists, and it is a little known game for the Game Boy known as Balloon Kid.

As a sequel to the alright, yet not too substantial Balloon Fight, I think this game is actually a pretty good improvement, not just because it is an actual full game this time around. Of course, some of the problems I had with Balloon Fight are still present here, but I would still recommend for those who were a fan of the original game.

The story is very simple and understandable, the graphics are Game Boy graphics, but the sprites are more detailed, so it looks better than the original, the music is actually pretty good, even if some of it is just reused from Balloon Fight, and that there isn't too many tracks, the control is about the same as Balloon Fight, except this time it handles better (not by too much), and there is more there to mess around with, and the gameplay stays true to the original, while also updating it to where I would consider it better than the original.

The main gameplay is pretty similar to that of Balloon Trip from the original, where you move from right to left, collecting balloons and avoiding obstacles, taking on bonus stages for extra lives, getting powerups if lucky, taking on bosses, and even detaching yourself from your balloons in several instances, needing to then blow up a new pair to fly with.

Yeah, it isn't too different from the original game, or even too different from other platformers at the time, but I found myself really liking this game, not just because it is a proper game, but also because of how it executes its ideas, coupled with the various different locations you go to and the music. Not to mention, there are two other separate modes in the game you can check out, such as a 2-player battle mode, which I didn't play because I have no friends, and the Balloon Trip mode from the first game.

With all that said, this is still a Balloon Fight game, and I still have a problem with your momentum in the game. Yes, this is an improvement over the original, but it is still pretty heavy, and it will often lead to a good number of accidental deaths. This is also paired with how whenever you don't have any balloons, for some reason, you move like fucking Sonic, and you can run yourself off platforms pretty easily. Also, the game doesn't tell you how to inflate more balloons, so that also took some time to figure out.

In addition, the bosses are also not the best. They are pretty simple, just bounce on their heads and they die, but in order to actually do damage, you have to hit them while detached from your balloons, and when paired with the terrain you often fight them in, it can be quite annoying at times. Nothing impossible, but it can become a bother.

Overall, while it is nothing too spectacular, it's a fun sequel to Balloon Fight, and my personal favorite of the two, even if it still has the movement issue that I wish wasn't there.

Quick fun fact, for some reason, in Japan, this game was released on the Famicom as a Hello Kitty game. Because when I think of Balloon Fight, I obviously think of... Hello Kitty, seriously, why though?

Game #109

This is the most biased rating I've ever given.

When I was three my parents decided it would be a good idea to buy a GameBoy for me for Christmas in a bundle pack with two games, Tetris Attack and, my first video game ever, Super Mario Land. I'm pretty sure they got it in a bundle pack or something, but the only image of a silver GameBoy Pocket with either of those games I could find was this one, which only had Super Mario Land in it, so I'm pretty sure my parents bought Tetris Attack separately, knowing basically nothing about video games and noticing that it said "Nintendo" on it and that the box art was colorful. A few month later, they noticed that I wouldn't shut up about Catrap, a game I had been playing at my babysitter Judy's house, the same babysitter who introduced me to the GameBoy in the first place, albeit on the original big clunker brick GameBoy instead of the Pocket I would eventually get. I was really into the cartridge art of the 3D digital-looking environment with the anime-esque art of the characters being something I had not been exposed to yet, and the game itself being a puzzle game but also a side-scroller where you climb ladders and pushed blocks was all a three-year-old me needed to think it was cool. One day after coming home from Judy's I was gifted with, you guessed it, Catrap. Catrap is fine.

My point is that my parents made a gigantic mistake and I love them for it.

Balloon Kid fills me with the same kind of feeling that I get when thinking about why I love some other GameBoy games, despite the clear age on the games and hardware itself. It's a clunky experience with a poor framerate, consisting of auto-scroll levels where you have to dodge obstacles to eventually get to a boss at the end, containing a few catchy tunes that play on the Balloon Fight leitmotif a la pretty much every Mario game released after Super Mario World. The game itself isn't gonna blow anyone's mind or anything, but it's impossible for me not to love something that represents such a specific part of video games so close and dear to my heart.

As it turns out, all I need in a video game is simple enough gameplay with good music from the GameBoy sound chip.

Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Dad. I love you.


Seventh GOTW finished for 2023. Was surprised how much I liked this game. The music was great, the level design was great (except that last one), and the quick decision-making between letting go of your balloons and pumping up new ones was tensely fun. Had a blast with this one!

This is a snappy, fun little game. Great Hip Tanaka soundtrack. I really like the tension of letting go of your balloons or trying to make a quick pit stop to pump up a new one. The last level's cruel but that's what save states are for.

Kinda charming but idk I didn't vibe with this as much as I wished I did. I like Balloon Fight's trip mode, but not like, 40-minute autoscroller like it. Feels really slow for the first half - it did get a lot cooler in the second half when they have you inflate and release your balloons to navigate these hybrid platforming sections, but those same levels get really trigger-happy with spikes and 1-hit-kill hazards. Also felt like my inputs were being dropped a lot - maybe an emulation issue or the controller I was using, but I didn't notice it with anything else in my GB binge so far.

Not a whole lot to say about this one. It's fun but not spectacular enough to leave much of an impression. It takes the basic gameplay of Balloon Fight and presents it in a stage-based platformer. The game is mostly easy, though it does have a few sections of relatively cheap difficulty which result in annoying deaths, but checkpoints are pretty fair. The boss fights are a lot of fun too. Solid game for anyone looking to expand their Gameboy knowledge. 3/6

I'd call myself a mild BALLOON FIGHT fan, so this game's existence feels like something of a gift. "Balloon Trip" mode, but a full game? With enemies and bosses and platforming and worlds and everything? And it actually works pretty well? Wow!

The Game Boy being the chosen platform for this is both fitting and a bit of an albatross. The entire game, just by its nature, is an autoscroller, and that means it's gonna need to be something engaged with in small chunks (to keep from going insane). Perfect for a short, punchy GB game. But in turn, this means small playfield and lower resolution, both of which greatly impact the obstacle design and your ability to navigate. Not to mention the physics of the floating - not able to be nearly as tight as on NES, it seems, and that's kind of the whole deal of the game, so.

But none of these drawbacks are fatal. It's designed well enough to mostly overlook and/or deal with them, and that's made even easier with a big dose of Nintendo R&D1 charm and an outstanding soundtrack by Tha God Hip Tanaka that's all spun off from the original NES game's main song.

Difficulty gets a little intense in the back half and requires some mild trial-and-error/leaps of faith/memorization to get through, but it's doable. It's some overlooked classic-era Nintendo! If you liked BALLOON FIGHT, it's worth a spin.

Pretty short. Movement took a bit to get used to. But was pretty satisfying to master. Bosses were nothing special, final one was pretty hard though.

Gostaria de jogar a versão da Hello Kitty para ver se é melhor.

Played on February 12th, 2023.

Great short fun, big difficulty spike at Level 7. Pro tip: spam down to get your balloons back.

19 years before the Balloon Boy saga, Pax Sofnica warned us about the dangers of sending a child drifting away to the sky on a balloon. For real though, I enjoyed the loop of going for a 1cc run of the eight-level campaign, then giving the much more challenging Balloon Trip mode a couple of shots before starting another run.

At some point a bit into my very early childhood my parents had enough of me asking to play the NES or Genesis on our one TV we had in the living room, so they got me a Game Boy and three games to play with. Two of them are incredibly obvious ones that pretty much everyone had, Super Mario Land and Tetris. The third one though? This damn varmint right here.

Balloon Kid is the sequel to Balloon Fight and attempts to turn it into a full-fledged auto-scrolling adventure rather than an arcade-style Joust ripoff game. The excuse plot of your little brother blowing up too many balloons and getting swept up by the wind is flimsy, but oddly somehow works well. I feel like there's something to simpler plots like this. Like villains out to dominate the planet, or something trying to destroy Earth? Couldn't care less about that stuff. If I can't help this little girl save her brother though I'm gonna lose sleep over it.

Something about those backgrounds just really drew me in too, like why does the city have buildings resembling pencils and matchsticks? Well, apparently it's because the place is called "Pencilvania", it's dumb as shit but I like it. You also get to fly into a whale's mouth and do an entire stage in there for some reason, I assume her brother went in there earlier? That would explain the balloons you pick up along the way actually! They're not just there randomly, your brother in distress is constantly dropping them! I also like this boss who's just an evil snowman who telekinetically throws his bucket hat at you.

I feel most people who play this game now would probably hate the Balloon Fight mechanics like Alice bouncing off shit like a pinball, but otherwise I think it's pretty fun. It's got a pretty good difficulty curve too, the first half is relatively easy and the second half gets pretty damn challenging, though the final stage in the factory can get hellish with it's OHKOs, but thankfully checkpoints are very nice in this one.

However I think I probably wouldn't have gotten as attached to this game if the music didn't stick with me as much as it did. I wanna say the first stage theme here was among the first that really stuck with me as a kid, at the very least after the Kraid's Lair theme from Metroid. It makes sense since both were made by the same person.

Mr. "Hip" Tanaka thank you very much for your contributions to our childhoods.