Bonk's Revenge

~ BONK'S REVENGE ~

Hudson Soft / Red

HuCard

1991

Bonk's Revenge is highly reminiscent of its excellent predecessor in many surface-level regards, but being that the formerly smooth play system suddenly finds itself plagued by clunkiness, I've never been a big fan of the title. Still, whenever I power it up, I'm immediately struck by how appealing its cartoony graphics are. Bonk's Adventure is nice looking and colorful, but Revenge reaches an entirely different tier with its visuals. The difference in graphical quality is vast despite many of the games' respective stage themes and cast members being quite similar to one another.

Strip design also took a huge step forward. There are secrets to uncover all over the place along with great ideas at work in enemy placement and level structuring.

You can scour the stages to find entryways to bonus rounds, most of which are enjoyable, and as my brother Duomitri can tell you, it's lots of fun to see how many of the scattered-about smiley faces you can collect. The train-ride-based bonus scenes that the stages conclude with are also very cool.

The soundtrack is as good as you'd expect it to be, being that many of its tunes were borrowed from Adventure (although most of its original material is also quality stuff).

My only major complaint is that a brief delay takes place during each spin of Bonk's spin jump, which makes for choppy gameplay. There are two typical counters to this gripe:

1) The delay adds to the challenge.

Well, I always beat the game with lots of lives left no matter how terribly out of practice I am. It isn't challenging even with the delay.

2) The delay prevents people from leaping into the air and cannonballing their way through stages, as was possible in many levels of the first Bonk game.

Well, the level design is strong enough here to minimize that sort of tomfoolery anyway, and there's so much more incentive to explore this time.

It could be said that the boss battles are a little more interesting in Revenge because you can't just bounce around atop your adversaries' heads like you can in Adventure. This is a fairly minor point since the game's strengths lie in level design and aesthetic appeal rather than in strategic battling, so I still wish I could have the old spin back.

Speaking of the bosses, another (relatively minor) complaint I have is that the last battle is quite anticlimactic. Some of the earlier encounters are interesting, if not particularly difficult to emerge victorious from...

...but the last couple of bosses are bums.

I do enjoy Revenge more now than I did in years past, even though the spin delay still irks me. I guess I'm more patient these days, so I appreciate things like the level design and smiley scavenger hunts a lot more. I still find Adventure to be much more enjoyable, though.

Bonk's Revenge

RED/Hudson Soft - 1991 - U.S.A.

HuCard

Bonk's Revenge was the first Bonk title I ever owned. I remember saving my allowance for like 2 months so I could buy it the week it was released. I loved the game so much, it wasn't long before I made it a point to pick up Adventure. I even convinced one of my best friends to pick up Bonk's Revenge for the Gameboy. Much to our dismay, the Gameboy game..... sucked. It wasn't Bonk's Revenge, it wasn't even similar aside from the fact that it starred Bonk. I'm pretty sure this pissed my friend off, and made him even more envious of me because I owned a TurboGrafx-16 and he didn't. Oh well, I digress.

I look back on those early years of the TurboGrafx-16 with fondness, and much nostalgia. For a long time, Revenge ranked as one of my favorite video games. Over time, however, I grew more and more fond of Bonk's Adventure as the better experience. Then came Bonk 3, and at some point Revenge slipped from favorite to forgotten. I still go back and revisit Revenge every year or so, but unlike Adventure with its timeless magic, and Bonk 3 with its vast areas to explore, Revenge is just sort of..... there. I can't remember a time when I didn't know the game like the back of my hand-- every enemy, every secret. Being able to go back and replay the game with countless more gaming hours under my belt has afforded me the luxury of judging the game probably a little more objectively than my younger self.

Bonus rounds!

Collecting enough faces ears you a ride on a train where your friends offer moral support.

Bonk's Revenge is the black sheep of the series. The control is flawed, the classic gameplay is broken, and all the rules you know from part 1 and 3 you can throw out the window. Bonk is sluggish to respond, especially during the gameplay-crucial spin attacks. This artificially increases the difficulty of the game, a factor which is nullified by the surplus of extra lives to be found throughout the journey and the ease with which they are obtained. The result is a dynamic that becomes extremely irritating very quickly. Gone without a trace is possibly my favorite aspect of the Bonk games: being able to consecutively bounce an enemy combatant on your head for bonus points. Bonk's Revenge also borrows heavily from the soundtrack of Bonk's Adventure, making it the only game in the series to re-use music from a previous entry. Don't get me wrong. The Adventure soundtrack is a classic to be sure, but I would have appreciated more original numbers here. Florets also behave completely different in this episode.

Not that any of the Bonk games offer too much in the way of challenge, but Revenge was rendered unncessarily easy by increasing the maximum number of heart containers from five to eight. Add to this abundant extra men not-so-hidden in the levels and you've got a recipe for an easy clear. Too easy, if you ask me. The fifth stage doesn't even have a boss!

Revenge isn't all bad news, however; the new graphical engine gives Bonk a much needed facelift, seating the series a little more firmly in the 16-bit generation. You'll encounter waves of new enemies, many of which don't appear in any of the other four Bonk episodes. Level design is also much improved over Adventure, with stages less linear and more exploration-friendly, a concept not fully realized until Bonk 3. One success I'll grant Revenge is the revised Floret functionality, and I find it curious they didn't keep running with the idea in the later sequels. You can change the color of some Florets by bonking them (the color of the Floret determining it's behavior when you jump on it). Yellow Floret Sprungs can also be moved by bonking them, which if you ask me is a stroke of pure genius that wasn't even fully utilized.

Bonk's Revenge isn't an awful game by any means, but it's difficult to judge an episode in a series without comparing it to its fellows, and by those criteria I find it to be the weakest link.

Some of the bosses of Bonk's Revenge, including the iconic Dodogie (upper right).