50 Years of Video Games: Bonk’s Adventure (TurboGrafx-16)

By 1990, Nintendo’s NES had not only revitalized the home gaming market in the United States, it had comfortably asserted its dominance. Sega’s Master System hadn’t caught on and the freshly released Genesis was trying to steal Nintendo’s slice of the pie, but the Super Nintendo was looming on the horizon and would be released stateside the next year. There was, however, a third horse in this race, one that was doing surprisingly well in its home country of Japan. The PC Engine was a legitimate threat to Nintendo’s consoles, but when it went looking to enter international markets, it was slow to leave its home country and its impressive hardware debuted as other console manufacturers were releasing devices that matched it or even beat it. Known as the TurboGrafx-16 in America to try and still have a veneer of technological superiority, the problem with the console was that it pushed that angle too hard rather than simply trying to provide America with standout titles worth playing. However, a little over a year after it’s debut on U.S. shores, it got the game that would practically become the face of the console: Bonk’s Adventure.

This side-scrolling platformer has a few name changes across regions just like the system it serves as a flagship title for. Japan’s name for it, PC Genjin, is even a pun on their name for the system with Genjin being the Japanese word for caveman, and Europe, who also used the PC Engine name for the TurboGrafx-16, got it by a less clever name as PC Kid. For simplicity’s sake we’ll stick with Bonk’s Adventure here, and Bonk is a rather fitting name for the game’s heroic young caveman hero. Sporting an enormous bald head that is nearly double the size of the body that carries it, most everything you do in this game ties to that enormous noggin. To defeat enemies in front of you, you can swing that giant cranium forward to deal damage, Bonk’s head actually able to hit a generous distance ahead of him so that you aren’t jeopardizing yourself too much defending against the game’s basic enemies. Some foes can’t be hit head-on with your head though, so Bonk can also leap up into the air and spin over to bring his head down for some damage instead.

Attacking certainly seems like a good way of utilizing that massive head, but Bonk’s Adventure doesn’t stop there. When you leap up into the air, you can mash the button used for the headbutt dive to instead spin around and carry yourself forward, Bonk able to clear larger gaps and navigate levels a bit more freely with this means of travel. The turbo switch can make executing this incredibly easy, but if you don’t plan how you end your spin you might find Bonk landing on his feet or head when you might have preferred the alternative option. Bonk’s head can hold him back sometimes, a few areas containing little alcoves just as tall as Bonk that he might struggle to slip into, but that head can also help with normal platforming as the little caveman is actually willing to bite into the side of walls to help with climbing them. A bit of button mashing similar to the spin maneuver will help Bonk gnaw his way up a fair distance, and while this at first seems like a flavorful way of helping him cover jumps he only barely can’t make otherwise, his face even delightfully angry as he resorts to this method, but it has some special uses elsewhere. While a few Bonk’s Adventures levels are about safely platforming from one end of the level to another, the game actually has a surprising mix of stage variety, one of which involves Bonk scaling enormous trees and weaving through the branches and another where you walk beside a long waterfall and scale back up it with your teeth if you end up falling into the water below.

To continue to commend the game for the impressive commitment to Bonk’s head being a Swiss army knife, it would feel wrong to deny it some of its more traditional uses. Bonk can, in fact, use his teeth for the normal action of eating, and there is actually a three tier system in place involving whether or not Bonk has recently bitten into some meat. His normal state is a fairly capable caveman with a pretty generous amount of health, Bonk able to recover it by eating fruit and the game even letting you continue after losing all your lives and health from the current stage. However, if you find a piece of meat, Bonk will scarf it down and have his head erupt like a volcano, his power increased and a new ability entering his arsenal: petrification. If you do your downwards headbutt while this power up is active, most enemies types will briefly turn to stone once your cranium makes contact with solid earth. This power-up will disappear if you take damage or enough time passes, but if you hold onto it long enough or simply find the giant meat to eat instead, you can get the last tier of power: invincibility. Depending on how well you play and if you are poking around in secret areas or hitting every item flower, you can actually get these brief moments of invincibility fairly often in Bonk’s Adventure without it destroying the game’s difficulty. You do definitely feel its benefits because few areas in Bonk are lacking in enemies, your abundant health definitely helping to assuage this fact usually, but with invincibility you have the freedom to barrel through without fear for a brief but enjoyable power trip.

Throw in a few more head-related actions like being able to leap up from below enemies to bounce them upwards with your noggin and even the option to deflect projectiles with a good whack, we might have found the last of the long list of uses for that skull. Now that we know Bonk pretty well though, it’s important to explain why he’s even going on an adventure. A quite literal tyrant lizard king called King Drool has captured the Dragon Princess Za and dropped eggshells around the land that turn the many dinosaurs denizens into his obedient evil slaves. While Bonk doesn’t seem to have any personal investment in this, the little caveman still sets out to fix things and take down the evil king so that his prehistoric world can be at peace again. Along the way he will fight a few friendly dinosaurs who have been forced to serve King Drool (although one clearly reptilian creature insists he’s a gorilla), the boss battles actually pretty good tests of your ability to use Bonk’s big head in a battle setting. While some of these can be fairly easy once you understand how the boss is fought, that learning period is usually an interesting one even if some later fights perhaps don’t give you the room to really learn how to safely attack before they start unleashing attacks quickly. One nice feature to make tougher battles or even platforming segments more manageable though is that, so long as you have an extra life, Bonk will get back up after death right where his body landed, allowing you to push forward with minimal setbacks. In a bit of an odd choice though the abundant smiling faces you collect in a level will only be redeemed for health after a boss is defeated though, this after-fight heal up appreciated but the condition attached to it a rather strange approach to providing a collectable to grab during the actual stage.

The world of Bonk’s Adventure is a colorful one where many characters have exaggerated dopey expressions be they the large impressive boss sprites, a regular enemy, or even Bonk himself. There are a good variety of normal foes scattered throughout the levels that often serve as good complements to the ever-shifting dynamics at play in the adventure. Bonk’s Adventure has levels like one where you swim inside a dinosaur’s guts, another where cacti guard doorway after doorway that can lead to bonus games or goodies if you figure out how to get around them, the tree and waterfall levels mentioned earlier, and many ways to twist up how you proceed through a level either horizontally or vertically. You might need to get from the far left to the far right in a stage, but there might be big stretches of quick sand so you need to ride atop walking palm trees while dodging flying creatures. Another stage might have you bouncing across clouds or hopping up platforms that split in two, but Bonk’s Adventure thankfully never has a drop to your immediate doom so even those splitting platforms that don’t always work the best won’t lead to an immediate death. Some ideas like the underwater segments are a bit bland, Bonk often having enough room to swim around danger with ease or instead constrained so avoiding it is incredibly difficult instead, but while not every gimmick it brings up is well realized or tested properly, the mix comes out enjoyable and simply seeing something new so often keeps the action platforming diverse enough that even the weaker ideas don’t have time to wear out their welcome.

THE VERDICT: While a game about a caveman with a big head doesn’t sound that imaginative on the surface, Bonk’s Adventure is filled with creativity not only on how to mix up its platform stage design but how to keep Bonk using his head in a variety of different ways to engage with those levels. Not every idea is a winner but new twists keep entering how you navigate levels and Bonk’s versatile head proves an interesting tool for overcoming obstacles. A few allowances like the generosity with health and revival system allow the game to push back with a good degree of difficulty while still ensuring you’re built to handle it fairly well. Some gimmicks can slow things down and your aerial spin maneuver can be a bit too good at parts, but ideas like the meat power-up system can throw in moments of extreme power without trivializing the experience and a bright goofy visual direction makes Bonk’s first adventure an enjoyable one.

And so, I give Bonk’s Adventure for TurboGrafx-16…

A GOOD rating. Diversifying the action so much across the stages definitely gives Bonk’s Adventure its platforming appeal, but when you start to sort the individual stages out things do come out to good rather than great thanks to weaker moments like the swimming levels. The commitment to Bonk’s head being his all-purpose tool adds more character to a game already radiating a wonderfully cartoonish feeling, the goofy expressions, weird teeth and headgear, and silly situations all fitting this game where a caveman decided to forego the cliche club in favor of pounding his cranium into everything. The power-up system is solid and you do get a sense of strength every time you grab some meat to eat and yet you do need that helpfully large amount of health to overcome the moments that Bonk’s Adventure throws a surge of danger at you. If a moment is too easy it’s usually because a level gimmick like riding the tree or swimming around is made too lenient and if it’s too hard like the final boss fights it is because you aren’t given the most space to learn what you need to do, but these outliers aren’t even too harmful compared to a game with many little fun ideas to carry you from start to finish.

A game with personality and a protagonist who approaches action in a very unique manner, Bonk’s Adventure was definitely a sound pick for the face to represent the platform. The strange silliness is just as distinct as the head-focused gameplay, and while the TurboGrafx-16 sort of disappeared from public conscious after its weak run stateside, whenever it comes back into the discussion, you can usually expect this cartoon caveman to come up alongside it. A few more winning ideas for mix-ups and Bonk’s Adventure could have even stood among the greats in its genre, but it still manages to feel like a smart pick for people looking to get into a game console that failed to catch on not for a lack of good games, but for it’s odd approach to trying to enter a new market.