Fun and challenging platforming action in the crazy prehistoric world of Bonk.

Story

The fair Dragon Princess Za has been kidnapped by the foul King Drool. Bonk the Caveman takes it upon himself to rescue this princess. Bonk is fighting against all odds as the lands that he must traverse are filled with dangers, traps, wild animals and dinosaurs.

The Game

Bonk’s Adventure is a side-scrolling cartoon-styled platform game set in a prehistoric world. The game is the first in the Bonk series and has since its release become a true classic for many console gamers around the world.

You play as the slightly insane caveman-child called Bonk as he tries to undo King Drool’s evil doings. The goal of the game is simply to get from the start until the end of each of the levels by any means necessary, meaning there’s lots of bonking, jumping, running, climbing, swinging and swimming involved. The game allows for scrolling in all directions and the direction in which you’re traveling varies from level to level.

Controls

During his rescue mission Bonk will need to fight numerous enemies by either dropping headfirst onto them or by hitting them with a straight-on headbutt. Tapping Button II will cause Bonk to headbutt and this is a powerful attack as it knocks some enemies out with a single hit. Its reach is short, but head-butting can be done in quick succession, so it really makes for a useful attack.

You can also jump into the air and attack enemies from above. While Bonk is in the air, holding Button II will cause him to flip, head downward. Landing like this on an enemy will often knock it out, or at least deal damage to it. Tapping the button while in air will cause Bonk to perform somersaults, and this in turn will allow him to do longer jumps. Landing flat on the ground on his head will cause him to be stunned for a short duration so you must be careful about how and where you land.

The controls are good and easy to understand. They can come off as a little bit stiff though, because after you’ve jumped for example, there’s a fraction of a second where you can’t make another jump. It is thus impossible to make rapid consecutive jumps directly after another. Even if this delay is minimal, you’ll have to get used to its rhythm – especially during precision platform jumping.

Climbing walls is done by rapidly pressing the jump button while latched on to a wall. Even though the basic controls are easy, there are many tricks that you can discover and use to your advantage.

When you touch an enemy you’re typically thrown up in the air and pushed back. Bonk is in a short invulnerability state after each hit, but when you’re pushed back like this there’s always a risk that you’ll either fall down a hole or take another hit from an enemy while trying to recover.

Ground hazards, like the lava on the first stages is especially dangerous, because your invulnerability state will not keep you safe there.

Content

The game has 35 stages divided across five worlds, and there is plenty of variety; some levels will take you through labyrinthine caverns while others will have underwater swimming sections, tree climbing and environmental hazards such as corrosive slime or lava floods. The various environments offer lots of variation. You’ll get to explore volcano lands, underwater caves, tree tops, clouds, mountains and some mystic temples. There are barely two stages that look the same, and the game constantly mixes it up with various enemies and platforming elements in different combinations. The game has a fair share of secret areas and even has some bonus stages. It’s long for a platforming game, especially when considering all the repetitive training it takes to beat it.

The game starts you off with three hearts worth of health – each heart absorbs one to five hits, depending on what hits you. Eating various fruits, which can be found here and there, will increase your health. You can increase your heart capacity by collecting special heart power-ups. Furthermore, you begin play with two lives. Extra lives can be found in the game or by collecting enough points.

Bonk has a taste for meat: eating meat makes him fueled up with extra power. This boosts the power of his headbutts and gives him the ability to freeze enemies by pounding the ground with his head. If Bonk eats enough meat, it will triggering his berserk mode for a short period of time where he can knock enemies out just by running them through.

You’ll also notice small smiley faces dropping from defeated enemies. Collecting these will give you back lost health at the end of each world, and it will also be used to rank your performance giving you a comment depending on how many faces you’ve collected in each world.

Bonk’s Adventure is a tricky game that can be very hard on new players. Enemies will attack from every angle and there are lots of situations that you need to try a few times before being able to figure out how to get by without taking a hit. This game has lots of traps – enemies lurking where you least expect them and moving platforms are the most common. Plentiful are the occasions when enemies ambush you out of nowhere, and it can get pretty crowded on the screen.

As you progress through the game, enemies will become tougher, and the platforming becomes harder due to more complex platform layouts.

Obviously this game is meant to be a hardcore challenge, but it starts out easily enough to invite less experienced players to play and get into the game fair and square. With that said, the game does a pretty good job in growing with the player, or rather, forcing the player to get better and better.

Once you lose all your health, you lose one life and Bonk will lay down and start sleeping (with a peaceful smile on his face!). If you have extra lives, you can press the Run button and wake him up – the game continues then seamlessly from where you died. When Bonk loses all his lives, you can choose to continue the game for an infinite number of times. Using the continue feature sets you back a few stages so you are forced to replay some segments every time this happens. This easily becomes frustrating, but it could be considered fair and once you’ve played the same stage a few times you’ll know it well enough to beat it with no problems.

There’s no password support, so when you shut it off all your progress is lost. There’s also no options to adjust the difficulty level.

Graphics

Bonk’s Adventure has colorful graphics and passable animation. The environments are somewhat plain most of the time, but the game maintains a nice cartoon style look to it all the way through. The graphical style is somewhat humoristic as it depicts exaggerated facial expressions and other quirky details. Some of the sprites in the game are a bit hard to identify, and a few of the enemies look really dull, uninspired and generic. On the whole, the game looks fun and plays great – in fact, it’s very charming especially when considering the hardware limitations of the TurboGrafx-16 and the release year.

Sound

The soundtrack has a prehistoric theme, and most of the songs are okay, if not a little monotonous. There aren’t many songs in the game to begin with though, so you’ll hear them reused multiple times over the course of the game. There are some funny sound effects in the mix, but it’s pretty standard stuff. It should be said that the sounds go well with the graphics, so the entire presentation is very fitting.

Summary

Bonk’s Adventure is not a game for the impatient and easily frustrated gamer, because it does have a few cheap tricks that it will pull. In order to stand a chance you’ll need to learn much of the game by heart – precision and timing is constantly required. As such, this is one of those games that can easily turn an innocent mainstream gamer into a hardcore one.

Overall this is a fun game even though there are some quirks to it. Also, there’s quite a bit to discover in terms of maneuvers, secrets and bonus items.

Developed By: Red Company / Atlus Co., Ltd.
Published By: NEC Home Electronics
Version Reviewed: TurboGrafx-16
Genre: Platform
Players: 1
Also Available On: Wii (Virtual Console)
Released: 1990