Bonk Power! Playing Bonk's Adventure for the First Time on TurboGrafx-16

 Evil King Drool is up to it again!

Bonk's Adventure is the latest game I've played on my TurboGrafx journey! I've been waiting for this one to come along in my chronological list of TurboGrafx releases since I associate Bonk with the TurboGrafx more than any other game on the system. 

While I think I may have played it once or twice in the past, I honestly can't recall, and I was very eager to play it now that I've played so many other games in the TurboGrafx catalog. 

As an aside, do you remember when the illustrations in game manuals looked better than the in-game sprites? Well this game was an exception to that rule. Check out these "awesome" illustrations. LOL.

Like most of the TurboGrafx games I've played so far, Bonk looks and sounds great. The sprites are large and colorful, and look really good compared to what gamers had on the NES. I remember seeing screenshots of Bonk back in the day in magazine articles and in advertisements, and it always photographed well.

When North American gamers were introduced to Bonk, they already had been exposed to the Super Mario games and other platformers on the NES, but Sonic wasn't a thing yet. In perspective, the gameplay in Bonk is quite different than Mario, even though it is still a side-scrolling action game. 

Most of Bonk's attacks come in the form of him "bonking" his head into enemies. Of course he can headbutt enemies at the same level as himself, but I really like that when you jump you automatically "bonk" enemies above you, much like Super Mario when crushing blocks above him. 

But Bonk can also dive into enemies with his head, and this becomes critical to traverse certain spaces and attack enemies, especially the various bosses, many of which need to be "bonked" on the head several times in order to defeat them.

Bonk can also wall-climb by grabbing a wall with his teeth and chewing (?) his way up it. Because the TurboGrafx controller has turbo built-in you can use the turbo function to wall climb easier than button mashing.

The bosses in Bonk are interesting as well, since it seems like they are being mind-controlled or something with a helmet on their head, and once you bonk them on the head enough, the helmet breaks and they come to their senses and apologize for their behavior. It's actually quite funny.

Looking back at an old review of Bonk's Adventure in Electronic Gaming Monthly (my favorite magazine back in the day) they seemed to really like Bonk and gave it pretty high scores; much higher than a lot of other TurboGrafx games. (you can click on the image to enlarge it and read more)

You can checkout my very first time playing Bonk for this article. I've gotten better as I've played it more, but getting used to some of the mechanics in Bonk took me a little bit.

Overall it took me a bit to get into the gameplay of Bonk, but I did end up enjoying it, and I think I'll keep playing it from time to time. Would like to complete a full playthrough someday soon, but I haven't been able to yet (although I have tried).

Now that I've played Bonk, the next game on my TurboGrafx journey is...

Neutopia! Released in April 1990, the same month as Bonk.

Don't know too much about this one, but it looks interesting enough.

Until next time...