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バルーンファイト
©Nintendo 1984
Release: 1985-01-22 (¥4500)
Cartdridge HVC-BF
Action/Platform game
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Released in America as
BALLOON FIGHT
( NES-BF-USA )
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Released in Europe as
BALLOON FIGHT
( NES-BF-XXX )
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Balloon Fight is a single/fixed screen action game by Nintendo and
basically modeled on Williams's arcade game Joust originally released
in 1982. The player takes control of a floating character
equipped with a helmet and two balloons tied to his back, and the action buttons allow him to
quickly flap his arms, and to fly like a bird and defy gravity. The goal of each stage is fairly
simple - our atypical hero must fly around the screen and clear all the rival balloon fighters.
As he hits them from above and pops their balloons, they slowly parachute to the ground and must
be kicked into the water, and this before they even get a chance to inflate another balloon and
burst into battle again. Once an enemy is defeated and sinks to his doom, a bubble slowly
floats up and can be collected for points. Of course the player is not immune to enemy attacks,
and if one of his balloon pops, then his ability to fly becomes greatly restricted, and one more
hit sends him plunging into the water. And that's not all, storm clouds are dotted around each
stage and start shooting lightning bolts if the player lingers too long in a single level. Furthermore,
one of the most dangerous challenges of all is the large hungry fish that lives in the water - if
the player (or an enemy) happens to fly too close to the bottom of the screen, the predatory fish
will try to gobble them in one bite. Finally, a bonus stage awaits the player every three levels, in
which he has to pop twenty balloons within a time limit for bonus points. The game includes a
simultaneous two-player mode as well as a single-player game called 'Balloon Trip', in which
the goal is to fly forward, avoid lightning bolts and collect balloons for points.
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The Famicom version of Balloon Fight can be somehow considered as a
port of the arcade game VS Balloon Fight (picture on the right) released by Nintendo in 1984,
only few months before the version tested here. VS Balloon Fight was designed
as a two-player competitive style play and some editions even featured a double
cabinet with two screens. Interestingly, it seems that VS Balloon Fight was
developed by a different team at Nintendo, and the game does indeed show some
noticeable differences. The most obvious one is the size of the playfiled which is a
lot taller than the Famicom port, and scrolls vertically. Controls are also slightly different and the
arm-flapping doesn't feel as effective (no auto-flapping), and the game is a tad more difficult (enemies
are better/quicker at deploying their parachutes it seems).
Finally, VS Balloon Fight didn't include the Famicom
exclusive Balloon Trip mini-game mode which, interestingly, was later released as a
Game & Watch title (both in Crystal Screen and Regular editions). The
original Balloon Fight was also ported in 1985 to the Sharp X1 and NEC PC-8801
by Hudson Soft. A sequel called Balloon Kid followed and was released
in 1990 for the Game Boy (curiously exclusively in Europe and
North America) - the game takes the balloon Trip framework from the original
Famicom version and expands it. A (unofficial) clone of Balloon Fight was
also released in 1991 for the Supervision handheld system - developed by Watara,
the game starred a pig as a hero and penguins as enemies. Although Balloon Fight was
part of the Famicom Mini series released for the Game Boy in 2004, the franchise
flew underneath the radar until 2007 when Tingle's Balloon Fight was released for the
Nintendo DS in Japan (it was however only available as a bonus item for
Club Nintendo members).
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Teaser text copied from the American version:
You'll need lightning-
fast reactions to win
this battle in the sky!
Take to the skies! BALLOON FIGHT.
You'll score lots of points and have loads
of fun when you birst enemy balloons
and send their parachutes crashing into
the sea. But beware. These hot air invaders have an amazing ability to land
safely, blow up another balloon and come back stronger than before! What's
more, if you fly too low you'll be devoured by man-eating sharks! Challenge
them alone if you think you're up to it, or team up with a friend. Either way,
you'll have the time of your life fighting off your opponents in the sky and
avoiding those hungry sharks bellow in BALLOON FIGHT!
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Click on picture to enlarge |
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LK
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Add your Pov here !
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P
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Lets face it, Balloon Fight is mostly modeled after Williams'
classic Joust released in 1982, and this blatant rip-off really came as
a surprise to me. Nintendo is known for its commitment to innovation,
and this comes across as a cheap shot (on another hand, I'm not sure if the
arcade game Joust was ever available in Japan, and the Famicom
version was only released in 1987). Anyway, I don't usually mind when games
borrow ideas from other games with the purpose of improving, and in that respect,
Nintendo succeeded admirably (Balloon Fight was released three years
after Joust though). Altogether, I feel that Balloon Fight has tighter and
more responsive controls, levels are more varied with additional obstacles, all
this without forgetting the special bonus stage Nintendo threw in. But let's
not start a polemic about which game is better (both games are classics in their
own right), but I feel that Balloon Fight definitively has a 'fun' factor
I've never really found in Joust, and it has a lot less frustrating moments.
Although levels can be a bit repetitive after a while, Balloon Fight showcases
all the heart-pounding and addictive fun of the classic arcade games of the 80's,
and a brilliant simultaneous two-player mode.
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