[Review] Balloon Fight

REVIEW # 00000000 00111000

Balloon Fight is the very first game I played when I got my NES Mini. It’s a drug!!!

My heart says…

Do you know when you taste something for the first time and at first you’re like “Nah, I don’t like it so much…” but then you keep trying to eat and every bite it gets better until you realize is good as f**k? This is my feeling when I tried Balloon fight. It looked like an easy and boring game but I ended up playing it all night long trying to beat my personal record. It was a great discovery!

Splash screen

The splash screen is very easy and tastes a lot of Arcade: The  title in a big bold style, the option 1P/2P/Trip…everything reminds an arcade house. In fact back in 1984 the games was released primarily for Arcade and later ported on NES. But the atmosphere is still the same.

Graphics

The screen has a black background as it were night and remembers a lot of similar games (even the first Mario Bros. for example); the set is limited by the water on the bottom and by an ivisible roof on the top. Ther you’re free to roam left and right but if you go out of the screen of the right you’ll be coming in from the left side.

Narrative

Plot? Naaaah

Gameplay

Balloon fight it’as very easy and there are almost no rules: you have to fly with your balloon trying to pop your opponents balloon and kick them (or pop their parachutes) before they can inflate another balloon and fly again. Always paying attention not to fall in the mouth of the huge piranha waiting in the water down in the screen and not getting hit by the lightings.

Notingh more, very easy.

However Balloon Fight it’s a challenging and addictive game where you need also a bit otf tactics and strategy.

First of all you have to mind your own ballons, giving the fact that approcaching the higher levels your opponents will cooperate more and will try to put your back against the wall. You have two balloons so before losing a life you have to he hit two times. Obviously when you have only one balloon left of will be difficult ot fly and will be harder to pop the opponents. When you hit somebody and you kick him out from the game a bubble emerges from the water and if you manage to take it you’ll get an extra score.

Every three stager ther’s a bonus stage in whic you have to pop all the 20 balloons that come out from some pipes to get a juicy extra score (300 pts. every balloon plus a bonus is you score 20/20 which is 10000 pts. for the first bonus round, 15000 for the second, 20000 for the third and so on).

So an easy game but just because it’s easy is fun!

Sound

In Balloon Fight there are not so many sound or background music, by twe way I’m sort of addicted to the music you hear when the game ends. Actually in every game when you lose your last life you hear a sad musica but here you hear something with rythm. I think twis was a good idea because hearing something, let’s say, “happy” makes you want to play another game and you don’t feel depressed for having lost the game. Good intuition for Nintendo 🙂

Longevity

The ease of the game is its major strong point. You won’t ever play two equal matches and you can keep playing for hours and hours without even noticing you’re doing it. Balloon Fight it’s a super longeve game and when it’s played in 2-players cooperative it’s incredible!

Final Score 75/100

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Year: 1985

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre: Platform

Game Mode: Single Player, Two Players

Original Platform: NES (ported from Arcade)

From the same developers/publishers:

• Donkey Kong (1981)
• Duck Hunt (1984)
• The Legend of Zelda (1986) and sequels

Inspired to:

• Joust (1982)

If you liked it you can also try:

• Return of the Space Warrior (1986)
• Ikarus (1991)

Other chapters of the saga:

• Vs. Balloon Fight (1984)
• Baloon Kid (1990)
• Baloon Fight GB (2000)
• Ballon Fight-e (2002)
• Famicom Mini Balloon Fight (2004)
• Tingle’s Balloon Fight (2007)

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