Skip to main content

Balloon Fight: Joust right

Despite being a very creative company, one of Nintendo's earliest NES games was a blatant rip-off of the 1982 arcade smash Joust (which itself came to the NES in 1988). In Balloon Fight, instead of knights on flying ostriches knocking each other off their mounts, people carried aloft by balloons pop up each other's balloons.

An arcade-style game, Balloon Fight takes you through three beginner levels, followed by nine more difficult levels (which then loop). Gameplay never varies: you knock down the other balloon fighters by colliding with them from a higher altitude, then knocking them off a platform before they can re-inflate their balloon. Occasionally, lightning-generated sparks must be avoided. Bubbles come up from the water below, which can be popped for bonus points. Get too close to the water, and a giant fish may spring out and eat you! Every three levels there is a bonus stage where you try to pop twenty balloons coming out of four pipes. If you don't miss any, you score extra. One nice feature is that, while the A button flaps your arms once, holding down the B button flaps them continuously for rapid movement. Like Joust, Balloon Fight also has two-player simultaneous play.

As in other NES arcade-style titles, there is a bonus mode, here called Balloon Trip. In this, there are no other people; instead, you have to dodge sparks while scrolling right to left and popping balloons. The trip doesn't last long, but it's a nice addition all the same.

The graphics are charming, and the Balloon Trip music track is great. The main game lacks music, but a little tune plays whenever you clear a stage. It's amusing that the enemies wear bird masks.

Overall, Balloon Trip is a well remembered little arcade-style game that helped round out the NES's nationwide launch in the summer of '86. The previous fall's launch was limited to New York City, which then expanded into L.A. in the new year. For the vast majority of early adopters, Balloon Fight was a de facto launch title, which is also true of the games I'll be reviewing next.

Grade: B+

Gameplay: Fun, but perhaps not for everyone (16/20)
Theme: Compelling, fun, well designed concept and characters (20/20)
Controls: Controls are smooth and let you do what you want (15/15)
Difficulty: Little challenge (unless you're a high-score chaser) (12/15)
Graphics: Good-looking if a bit lackluster (12/15)
Sound: One solid track (12/15)

Linked Reviews
"Balloon Fight is delightful in short bouts now and then."
— Stephen Kelly, NintendoLife, 5/10

"Now THIS is how you make a clone of a game – you take the basic concept but twist it and make it your own."
— Pat Contri, Ultimate Nintendo, 3.5/5

"At a time when the NES hadn't reached its potential, and Super Mario Bros. was still the most complex game available, Balloon Fight was just OK."
— Dylan Cornelius, Questicle, B-

"There is a tendency these days for some people to take Balloon Fight for granted, but amidst its Black Box brethren it stands out as one of the most refined and entertaining, classic NES creations even now."
— Jeremy Parish, NES Works

Stats
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Action
Release date: June 1986
Extend: n/a
My high score: 198,150
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

SimCity: The OG city simulator still rocks

When I ordered an Analogue Super Nt to begin collecting and playing SNES games, I knew which game I wanted to play first: SimCity. This game hasn't been rereleased since the Wii Virtual Console in 2006! Analogue Super NT SimCity was created by Will Wright as a PC game, published in 1989. Nintendo worked with Maxis to have it ported to the Super Nintendo for their new console's launch. The SNES version is a huge improvement over the original, with improved graphics, pop-up advice screens from Dr. Wright, and, most importantly, gifts. But let's start at the beginning. SimCity was the first ever city-simulation video game. Your goal is to build up a city as successfully as you can. You can play however you like, as it is not possible to "beat" the game, but the main achievement is reaching a population of 500,000, at which point your city becomes a "megalopolis." The maps are fairly small (and some have a lot of water), so the only way to achieve this is to
Post a Comment
Read more

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: 20th anniversary

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is special to me because it was one of the first games I played on the Wii U. I hadn't owned a video-game console since the Super Nintendo until my wife bought me a Wii U for my 30th birthday. Since I missed the Game Cube and Wii eras, playing The Wind Waker was a revelation to me. It was as good as I remembered A Link to the Past being. I've read that, when it debuted, some people hated the cel-shaded art style of The Wind Waker. In retrospect that's hard to fathom, because the game is such a visual delight. The cartoony style and feel of the game is probably its strongest feature, at least for me. Sailing the seas and exploring the game's many islands is a joyous process of discovery. There are all sorts of quirky citizens to meet and interact with, including an auction house, bird people (the Rito), pirates, a traveling merchant (Beedle), temples, and the long-lost, sunken kingdom of Hyrule. The mid-game twist delighted me: Link l
Post a Comment
Read more

Final Fantasy: Square's sword-and-sorcery series starter still slaps

Garland will knock you all down! Final Fantasy is the genre-defining classic of 8-bit Japanese RPGs. It also happens to be a personal favorite of mine. My nostalgia for it is strong enough to compensate for its outdated elements. The monsters and gameplay of Final Fantasy are taken straight from Dungeons & Dragons. You control a party of four characters, to whom you assign names and classes. The classes are Warrior [Fighter], Monk [Black Belt], Thief, Red Mage, White Mage, and Black Mage. The Red Mage is a jack of all trades and master of none: he can cast white and black magic spells, but not the most powerful ones. Unlike other mages, he can also equip swords, armor, and shields. This makes him versatile. The Monk doesn't wear armor, which makes him vulnerable to physical attacks, but he can dish out huge damage with his bare hands. The Thief can't steal anything, because there are no class-specific commands in this game besides magic. Instead, he is a weaker fighter who
Post a Comment
Read more