A solid sequel that added multiple gameplay mechanics and and larger levels compared to the first game, but never manages to reach the brilliance of stuff like Super Mario World and aesthetically still not my jam.
# Childhood nostalgia
Not everyone has a childhood video game, but it’s common enough trait for those of us who grew up after the 80s that it’s become a cultural cliché. Bonk’s Revenge was mine. I owned the original and this sequel, but Revenge imprinted on me, probably due to it being a little easier to control and delivering a much brighter colour palette.
Bonk is a Mario-like platformer positioned in the same was Mario was: a mascot to make this video game system something a kid would want their parents to buy. You traverse to the right, finish levels, find power-ups, defeat enemies and bosses, and eventually save[1] a princess.
It’s fun, pretty breezy for most of it, colourful, kid-friendly, and memorable. It takes the average player two hours to beat it. Much like the TurboGrafx 16, it’s barely remembered. I think there’s a reason for that beyond bad marketing, though.
# Controls
With most mascot platformers, there’s a proper noun, and a verb. Mario jumps. Sonic spins. With Bonk, the character and the action are not two things. Bonk bonks.
The instruction book calls this action a headbutt. But, dear reader, please understand: it is a bonk. The game, in at least one mini-game, instructs you to defeat enemies by bonking. This is the correct word.
In Bonk games, there’s two actions. You can jump, and you can bonk. Pressing the bonk button while just standing there makes Bonk bonk. If there’s an enemy right in front of him, they’ll die. That’s simple enough. Hit the jump button, then hit the bonk button, and Bonk dives in the direction you push the controller. Now you’re using both hands, setting up and guiding an attack.
Hit the bonk button once in the air, and Bonk dives head-first into anything you point him at. If it’s an enemy, they usually die. But when they die, Bonk ricochets off the enemy, gaining height. You determine the direction Bonk ricochets by determining his initial direction. It works really well and feels really good, but this takes time to get used to.
But the TurboGrafx 16 controller didn’t just have buttons. It also had switches. There were two buttons and two switches, and the switches had three notches each. In the instruction book, it says “Experiment with the turbo switches. Different settings will help you out at different points in the game.” This is pretty obtuse! This is not a design people are just going to get.
If the switch is flicked down, the button will press once. If the switch is flicked to the middle, the button will press repeatedly about as fast as a human and repeatedly press the button. If the switch is flicked all the way up, the button will press repeatedly faster than most humans can repeatedly press a button.
Most of the time you need the switch flicked all the way down so pressing the bonk button while midair makes Bonk dive. If you jump at a wall and hit the bonk button, Bonk performs a wall jump. There’s a lot of goodies and secret stages seemingly just out of reach, so you’ve got to get good at these ricochet moves pretty early.
But sometimes you need the switch flicked all the way up, so holding the bonk button hold down the Bonk button. If you’re in midair, Bonk will spin. Spinning in turbo mode makes him spin a lot faster and, with enough inertia, can go farther. But you have to be careful here, because this spin isn’t like, say, Sonic’s. You’re really vulnerable to enemies, because only the head part of your sprite will hit them. With some bosses, there’s a solid method of quickly spinning around their weak points, but you’ll also be taking damage.
I think this level of finicky precision probably turned a lot of people off Bonk even during the TurboGrafx run. It just doesn’t feel as intuitive as a Mario or Sonic game. But I bet it turned off even more people later, when trying to emulate the game using other controllers.
# Emulation
The TurboGrafx/PC Engine has been something you could emulate for a long time. Officially, you could buy TG-16 games on the Wii in 2007. Before that, I saw emulators on pc and in the browser running pretty well. Getting the games to play didn’t seem to be the hard part; it was getting the controls to feel right.
On the Wii, if you played Bonk, there were two buttons that acted normally, and two buttons that acted as if the switch was flicked all the way up. This was okay, but it neglected the middle switch option. It seems like, if you want to buy a good TG-16 controller these days, this four-button scheme seems to be the norm. It’s never felt totally right for me.
With this play-through of Bonk’s Revenge, I created a control scheme in Retroarch that works like this: I had the jump button and bonk button set to the A and B buttons on my 3DS. The Y button became the “turbo” button, and I would hold down the bonk and turbo buttons at the same time in order to spin continuously. This felt natural enough, but even here I found a limitation: the “rapid fire” setting in Retroarch only gave me the “middle switch” amount of rapid fire for a TG-16 controller. I could never actually reach full spin speed with the bonk button.
It was enough to beat the game because Bonk is not a hard game, but I couldn’t 100% it because of this. I don’t think it would fly with other TG-16 games that require the switch flicked all the way up. For that, I’d probably invest in the 8-bit do controller.
# Difficulty
The game asks you if you want easy, medium, or hard. The difficulty isn’t communicated by number of enemies or how much damage Bonk can take, but by how many levels you want to play. I like this approach. Maybe you’ve only got half an hour and want to see a game to completion. Bonk’s got you. Maybe you only want to play through the fun easy first few levels that are absolutely stuffed with 1-ups and heart pieces, smiley faces, and mini games.
At first you don’t see the point to all these mini games. Why am I collecting these little smiley faces everywhere? But you get it after you defeat the first boss. Bonk rides a little elevator, and it goes higher based on the number of smiley faces you collect. Every 10 smileys gets you one level higher, and you ride a cute little train full of cheerleading animals that refill your hearts or give you 1-ups.
Collect 50 smiley faces, and the princess warps you past a whole world.
I like this approach. The easier levels at the beginning are so full of opportunities to collect 1-ups and extra heart pieces (you begin with three and collect up to eight, and you keep them after death, like Zelda) to equip you for getting through the tougher levels later.
A great player could probably skip all the mini-games in the first few worlds and breeze through the end-game, especially if they’re good at switch management.
# Fun
The word “Bonk” is so fun to say that someone made a social network[2] where it’s the only word available.
Bonk’s Revenge is a fun action platformer. There’s enough going on in each world that you feel you’re getting a lot out of it, and its short runtime means there’s no filler. The game never runs out of ideas and rarely repeats sections. I wish it was better known.
[1] In Bonk’s Adventure, the princess has been brainwashed into being one of the bosses and requires rescue. In Bonk’s Revenge, she assists you in the same and gives you a smooch at the end, but doesn’t seem to be in much peril herself.
[2] bonkbonkbonk.app
Screenshots: https://parosilience.tumblr.com/tagged/Bonk%27s%20Revenge
Not everyone has a childhood video game, but it’s common enough trait for those of us who grew up after the 80s that it’s become a cultural cliché. Bonk’s Revenge was mine. I owned the original and this sequel, but Revenge imprinted on me, probably due to it being a little easier to control and delivering a much brighter colour palette.
Bonk is a Mario-like platformer positioned in the same was Mario was: a mascot to make this video game system something a kid would want their parents to buy. You traverse to the right, finish levels, find power-ups, defeat enemies and bosses, and eventually save[1] a princess.
It’s fun, pretty breezy for most of it, colourful, kid-friendly, and memorable. It takes the average player two hours to beat it. Much like the TurboGrafx 16, it’s barely remembered. I think there’s a reason for that beyond bad marketing, though.
# Controls
With most mascot platformers, there’s a proper noun, and a verb. Mario jumps. Sonic spins. With Bonk, the character and the action are not two things. Bonk bonks.
The instruction book calls this action a headbutt. But, dear reader, please understand: it is a bonk. The game, in at least one mini-game, instructs you to defeat enemies by bonking. This is the correct word.
In Bonk games, there’s two actions. You can jump, and you can bonk. Pressing the bonk button while just standing there makes Bonk bonk. If there’s an enemy right in front of him, they’ll die. That’s simple enough. Hit the jump button, then hit the bonk button, and Bonk dives in the direction you push the controller. Now you’re using both hands, setting up and guiding an attack.
Hit the bonk button once in the air, and Bonk dives head-first into anything you point him at. If it’s an enemy, they usually die. But when they die, Bonk ricochets off the enemy, gaining height. You determine the direction Bonk ricochets by determining his initial direction. It works really well and feels really good, but this takes time to get used to.
But the TurboGrafx 16 controller didn’t just have buttons. It also had switches. There were two buttons and two switches, and the switches had three notches each. In the instruction book, it says “Experiment with the turbo switches. Different settings will help you out at different points in the game.” This is pretty obtuse! This is not a design people are just going to get.
If the switch is flicked down, the button will press once. If the switch is flicked to the middle, the button will press repeatedly about as fast as a human and repeatedly press the button. If the switch is flicked all the way up, the button will press repeatedly faster than most humans can repeatedly press a button.
Most of the time you need the switch flicked all the way down so pressing the bonk button while midair makes Bonk dive. If you jump at a wall and hit the bonk button, Bonk performs a wall jump. There’s a lot of goodies and secret stages seemingly just out of reach, so you’ve got to get good at these ricochet moves pretty early.
But sometimes you need the switch flicked all the way up, so holding the bonk button hold down the Bonk button. If you’re in midair, Bonk will spin. Spinning in turbo mode makes him spin a lot faster and, with enough inertia, can go farther. But you have to be careful here, because this spin isn’t like, say, Sonic’s. You’re really vulnerable to enemies, because only the head part of your sprite will hit them. With some bosses, there’s a solid method of quickly spinning around their weak points, but you’ll also be taking damage.
I think this level of finicky precision probably turned a lot of people off Bonk even during the TurboGrafx run. It just doesn’t feel as intuitive as a Mario or Sonic game. But I bet it turned off even more people later, when trying to emulate the game using other controllers.
# Emulation
The TurboGrafx/PC Engine has been something you could emulate for a long time. Officially, you could buy TG-16 games on the Wii in 2007. Before that, I saw emulators on pc and in the browser running pretty well. Getting the games to play didn’t seem to be the hard part; it was getting the controls to feel right.
On the Wii, if you played Bonk, there were two buttons that acted normally, and two buttons that acted as if the switch was flicked all the way up. This was okay, but it neglected the middle switch option. It seems like, if you want to buy a good TG-16 controller these days, this four-button scheme seems to be the norm. It’s never felt totally right for me.
With this play-through of Bonk’s Revenge, I created a control scheme in Retroarch that works like this: I had the jump button and bonk button set to the A and B buttons on my 3DS. The Y button became the “turbo” button, and I would hold down the bonk and turbo buttons at the same time in order to spin continuously. This felt natural enough, but even here I found a limitation: the “rapid fire” setting in Retroarch only gave me the “middle switch” amount of rapid fire for a TG-16 controller. I could never actually reach full spin speed with the bonk button.
It was enough to beat the game because Bonk is not a hard game, but I couldn’t 100% it because of this. I don’t think it would fly with other TG-16 games that require the switch flicked all the way up. For that, I’d probably invest in the 8-bit do controller.
# Difficulty
The game asks you if you want easy, medium, or hard. The difficulty isn’t communicated by number of enemies or how much damage Bonk can take, but by how many levels you want to play. I like this approach. Maybe you’ve only got half an hour and want to see a game to completion. Bonk’s got you. Maybe you only want to play through the fun easy first few levels that are absolutely stuffed with 1-ups and heart pieces, smiley faces, and mini games.
At first you don’t see the point to all these mini games. Why am I collecting these little smiley faces everywhere? But you get it after you defeat the first boss. Bonk rides a little elevator, and it goes higher based on the number of smiley faces you collect. Every 10 smileys gets you one level higher, and you ride a cute little train full of cheerleading animals that refill your hearts or give you 1-ups.
Collect 50 smiley faces, and the princess warps you past a whole world.
I like this approach. The easier levels at the beginning are so full of opportunities to collect 1-ups and extra heart pieces (you begin with three and collect up to eight, and you keep them after death, like Zelda) to equip you for getting through the tougher levels later.
A great player could probably skip all the mini-games in the first few worlds and breeze through the end-game, especially if they’re good at switch management.
# Fun
The word “Bonk” is so fun to say that someone made a social network[2] where it’s the only word available.
Bonk’s Revenge is a fun action platformer. There’s enough going on in each world that you feel you’re getting a lot out of it, and its short runtime means there’s no filler. The game never runs out of ideas and rarely repeats sections. I wish it was better known.
[1] In Bonk’s Adventure, the princess has been brainwashed into being one of the bosses and requires rescue. In Bonk’s Revenge, she assists you in the same and gives you a smooch at the end, but doesn’t seem to be in much peril herself.
[2] bonkbonkbonk.app
Screenshots: https://parosilience.tumblr.com/tagged/Bonk%27s%20Revenge
It reaches for Super Mario World levels of depth and intricacies, and almost achieves it. All on a PC Engine.
Pithecanthropus Computerurus is taking revenge in this follow-up. Enjoyed the overall improvements on level length and plentiful hidden bonus games. Stages also have more variety to them and difficulty has increased slightly from the original. The original PC Genjin was so quirky it felt more like a novelty or parody of mascot-type platform games of the time, whereas this game is more fleshed out and could hold its own in the genre. It still retains it's strange elements with wacky enemies and bosses.
I got filtered
I am begging this game to control better. We could have almost had it all, but then you had to make me guess every time whether or not this attack will land.
A stellar sequel that encourages exploration across the many stages, gorgeous visuals & an upbeat soundtrack, but heavily nerfed the aerial-spin, still has an annoying boss rush, and the latter worlds have annoying enemy placement.
Bonk's Revenge suffers from almost the same issues as its predecessor, with disastrous difficulty and life bar management that leaves much to be desired. However, it also features many improvements in its artistic design. There's a significant change in the music too; it's no longer as repetitive as in the first part. Additionally, the gameplay has notably improved, feeling much more controlled and satisfying.
So, remember when a first game has problems that leave it dated over time because its sequel is so much better that it surpasses the previous one? Well, in this game here, surprisingly, THE SAME DOESN'T HAPPEN, like on the one hand they improved the difficulty a little, but on the other, it seems like they fried one side of the hamburger, because after the fourth phase the game returns to that horrible difficulty of the first game and the boss rush is shit, because instead of facing the boss right away, you need to go through HORRIBLE mini stages to face the boss with a HORRIBLE life bar and have the most HORRIBLE, TERRIBLE and unnecessary system that came from the first Zelda that if you die after losing all your hearts you start all over again with 3 hearts, and like in Zelda it's not bad at all, because you can farm and stuff, but this is a fucking platform game, so fill up the life bar won't help you at all, because if you die you'll come back with 3 miserable losses and if you're facing the bosses in the boss rush it gets even worse. Now do I recommend this? Only if you have to play until phase four, so much so that the game starts with an option as to whether you want to play until a certain phase, in other words, they already knew that the game would get bad over time, which I congratulate, unlike other games. like Drill Dozer... But if you're stubborn, you can go through them all, I just wish your waifu was hugging you because holy shit, but on the bright side the ending is kind of cute and I think this is the most charismatic game in the trilogy at all. contrary to his successor.
Why is this cave man so fucking pissed
Huge downgrade from the 1st game aside from the colors and graphics. Level design wasn't as fun or interesting, most of the new music was annoying, and the bosses weren't as good.
Also Bonk doesn't exactly control great, which was fine in the first game cause they never really asked much from the player, but goddamn here some of the enemy placements drove me insane.
Here's hoping Bonk 3 steers the ship back in a good direction cause I enjoyed that first game.
Also Bonk doesn't exactly control great, which was fine in the first game cause they never really asked much from the player, but goddamn here some of the enemy placements drove me insane.
Here's hoping Bonk 3 steers the ship back in a good direction cause I enjoyed that first game.
Whoa I finally did it! Finished 10 PC Engine games already. Nice to see I've already met my goal. I had to end it off with something nice and who else but Bonk or PC Genjin as he's called in Japan. I played the Japanese version called PC Genjin 2 when going through it.
This is a pretty fun platformer and a nice improvement over the previous game though I should note I only played the Famicom version of the first game. It helps having played a game before as I was more used to the controls already. There's a lot of nice level themes here that the first game didn't have.
They changed the powerups this time around. Instead you become this weird girl Genjin? You also get this butt for a head bonk when you become invincible. They both seem to do the same as the forms last game outside of female genjin's kiss. Seriously though why a girl? It's also oddly not in the US version.
The bosses are better here then they were last time but not by too much, the only one I don't like is that one that spins around shooting snow projectiles. The final boss is still sadly really easy. He doesn't even have a second form this time. Why has he been so easy?
The game overall is pretty easy, I had 15 lives by the end. For some reason you can select to only play the first round only or the first four rounds only before the game starts. I have no clue why anyone wouldn't want to just play the whole game.
The music is nice, I really like the snow music that played. The game has a nice vibe to it I can respect. The presentation has had a nice step up from last time while still feeling like a sequel to the first.
If there was one thing I'd change, have less bonus stages. By the halfway point I almost just wanted to skip them because it gets old real quick but you want to them to get smileys. I feel like doing tough platforming would make for a better way of getting them.
If you still haven't played any games on this console. Give this one a try, you might really like it. I certainly did. Hopefully the 3rd game is even better than this whenever I get to that.
This is a pretty fun platformer and a nice improvement over the previous game though I should note I only played the Famicom version of the first game. It helps having played a game before as I was more used to the controls already. There's a lot of nice level themes here that the first game didn't have.
They changed the powerups this time around. Instead you become this weird girl Genjin? You also get this butt for a head bonk when you become invincible. They both seem to do the same as the forms last game outside of female genjin's kiss. Seriously though why a girl? It's also oddly not in the US version.
The bosses are better here then they were last time but not by too much, the only one I don't like is that one that spins around shooting snow projectiles. The final boss is still sadly really easy. He doesn't even have a second form this time. Why has he been so easy?
The game overall is pretty easy, I had 15 lives by the end. For some reason you can select to only play the first round only or the first four rounds only before the game starts. I have no clue why anyone wouldn't want to just play the whole game.
The music is nice, I really like the snow music that played. The game has a nice vibe to it I can respect. The presentation has had a nice step up from last time while still feeling like a sequel to the first.
If there was one thing I'd change, have less bonus stages. By the halfway point I almost just wanted to skip them because it gets old real quick but you want to them to get smileys. I feel like doing tough platforming would make for a better way of getting them.
If you still haven't played any games on this console. Give this one a try, you might really like it. I certainly did. Hopefully the 3rd game is even better than this whenever I get to that.
Bonk has a lot of ideas, a lot of things to collect for health, brief upgrades (that barely do anything due to how long they last), your head being a weapon so jumping up into enemies damages them and destroys blocks as well as your normal attacks, your headfirst dive attack can be cancelled and started multiple times to get air time or can be used to bounce off enemies, you can bite cliffs to climb them, swim up waterfalls, climb posts, swing up poles, eat fishing line to scale a cliffs you wouldn't be able to climb, find bonus stages, and stages all change up the environment and hazards while usually introducing new mechanics. Really didn't find the game fun to play though despite the things that you could do, didn't really all come together in an interesting way for me, and the controls just never felt responsive.