Balloon Fight GB (GBC)

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• Introduction
• Review
• Conclusion

Introduction

When it comes to a site about niche and obscure games, overlooked stuff, few people expect to see Nintendo games being covered here. And I understand that, as many of their series are popular, and even their less prominent series that are bound to taking a hiatus once in a while are all considerably well known. But because Nintendo only sticks to certain series and drops most of their other stuff as time goes on, only casually referencing it, it’s to be expected that a lot of their games may fall into obscurity.
While I don’t think the name Balloon Fight is obscure, I’m sure a lot of people who have heard about it may have never played any of the games, or only played the NES game.

Fair enough, and that’s where I come in.
I want to talk about these types of games when it comes to Nintendo, I will probably never make a review talking about most main games in their prominent flagship series (spinoffs are OK though), although you may expect me talking about some Zelda games, as while the console stuff is extremely popular, I’ve noticed the handheld games are considerably overlooked, at least the Game Boy ones… the ones that aren’t Link’s Awakening.

Today, I’m not talking about Zelda though, it’s Balloon Fight time! More specifically Balloon Fight GB, which I thought was the last Balloon Fight game (turns out there’s also Tingle’s Balloon Fight and maybe more?), and probably the best one.
The game was released through a Japan-only service called GB Memory or Nintendo Power (which has nothing to do with the American magazine), where you could download games for a blank cartridge, or buy a cartridge with a loaded game and then download more in some machines you could find in places, definitely a cool thing that I wouldn’t mind if it still existed for newer system (If you want a physical version of a download-only game? That would be so cool!). It came out on a big box, with the cartridge, a poster with the artwork, and a little badge thing with the game’s artwork, which is so cute! I’m too excited about such a minor thing, sadly I don’t have of those, so I can’t show them here, you can look it up though, I’d love to have all of those someday, and I will definitely show it here whenever that happens.
Anyway, enough, let’s go on with it the actual game.

Review

When you start up the game, you get 3 playable modes.

Balloon Trip is just like the original, an endless mode where you get balloons and avoid obstacles. There’s also a bubble that stops the screen from scrolling, which is probably a hazard.

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This was basically one of the main draws of the original game, but here it’s more of a little bonus, it was common at the time to have stuff like this being considered bonus, as the standards of games changes.
To the point of being considered merely a minigame.

Nowadays the only way of finding something like this as a standalone game is on mobile phones. There are a lot of those that look like really old arcade games, back when points were the main draw, and we’re back to it again, just with leaderboards. It’s kinda funny to think about it.

But that’s besides the point.
The original Balloon Fight was more of a battle game, where you pop other people’s balloons until only one lasts, either against CPU or another player, but here that mode is also relegated to a bonus mode, and it’s only available for 2 players, unlike the original.

So if both are side modes, what’s left?
Well, this game has a Story Mode!
The game calls it 1p game.
But there are actual levels and platforming and a little story, so I’ll call it Story Mode. It’s basically the main game, as there’s the most put into it.

You play as Alice, who is out to save her brother. That’s the story, a single sentence, but it’s fine because this game definitely doesn’t need anything more than that. It’s Balloon Fight! That’s like wanting a big story out of Clu Clu Land or Ice Climber.

Anyway, that’s that. Let’s get to the gameplay.
The game autoscrolls and has level design made with that in mind. Little platforms here and there, and obstacles that require you to dodge them.
There is a problem with some foreground elements looking like they are in the background.

The controls are a little floaty, as you would expect, there’s momentum and you have to keep that in mind, if you just hold a direction or press the jump button too much you will fly out of control. So keep that in mind.
It feels more normal when you’re just walking on land though.
You can’t really just control your direction by holding the button, you have to hold the button and the press the fly button to move where you want with a bit of momentum.

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Alice is very bouncy, so I really mean it when I say that you shouldn’t just hastily press the fly button and be careful, as if you bump into the edge of the screen or any object, you will bounce back which can be a problem.
It’s not as hard to control as it sounds though.

You go around collecting balloons in the rest of the game, except there’s platforming and more complex obstacles involved, sometimes a balloon with P on it shows up and if you grab it, it makes you invincible for a while while you flash, classic Nintendo stuff.

When you get a certain amount of balloons on the levels (it seems to be 20 consecutive balloons), double balloons start appearing. It’s not too hard to get balloons, as the hitbox is very generous, it counts Alice and her balloons (but the autoscroll and momentum can make it difficult).
So if you just touch the balloons with your balloons, it counts as you getting them (How many times did I say balloons there? The word starts to look a little weird now).

Same goes for damage though, if something touches you or your balloons, you will lose one, if both pop you will fall. It will pop only from above, if you make contact with something below you, you will just bounce, unless it’s an insta-death object/enemy.
If you fall on a solid surface though, you can tap down to make another balloon (or two). That’s the main gameplay for you. You can also press B to release your balloons.
As the game goes on, it will expect you to drop your balloons for some sections and then quickly make more balloons to not die.

In levels you will find a Game Boy you can enter on to get into a bonus.

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In the bonuses, you have to collect balloons, if you get them all you can get a 1up.

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If you get all the balloons in a level (it’s always 100, but it can increase with the double balloons I mentioned), you get a perfect rating and a 1up.
As you can see, it’s really easy to get lives in this game.
It’s good, because this game can get hard as it goes on.

When you beat a level you can save.
Although your lives don’t save, so you always restart with the default 5, which is fine, as I said, it’s really easy to get lives in this game.

Some levels have a boss, and you can beat them by pressing B to get off your balloons and bounce on its head (which launches you back into your balloons).

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Speaking of that, some areas require you to sacrifice your balloons to get through a narrow passage, I actually didn’t know about releasing the balloons, so I just used to let the autoscroll pop-up my balloons. But this makes a lot more sense.

There’s a world map, where you can return to a level, if you start any level, you can’t exit it, even if you already beat it. Considering how fast it is to reset GBC games, I’m not bother complaining about this at all, just noting it because someone might not like it.

An interesting thing about the levels is that they have a bit of a narrative context going on, which is nice. In level 3, you can see some whales in the background, at the end, you enter in a whale’s mouth, which is the next level (the whale even surfaces out of the sea in the world map!), in level 5 you start out coming out of the mouth.

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The ballooned opponents from the original Balloon Fight start to show up as enemies in later levels, and they make a godawful noise while they’re on screen. The big fish from the original is also here, and just like the original, it shows up when you stay too close to the water for a long time, and it’s easy to dodge.

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About enemies, most of them just pop your balloons (if they hit you from above), but others make you bounce in the opposite direction when collided with, and certain enemies and hazards are insta-death, like the blue lightning spark. In that case, the balloon hitbox can be a problem, as it counts and you die if just your balloons touch the spark.
As for hazards, they start out typical, but get harder as the game goes on, level 5 having heavy rain that pushes you down, meaning you have to get out of it as fast as possible, otherwise you will go straight to the sea, touching the water doesn’t kill you, even when submerged you can go back, but if you sink off-screen you’re dead.

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Stage 6 stands out as it’s more platforming than flying, having a lot of sections where you need to stay without balloons, it’s pretty hard, as it has ice physics, and you still bounce around, which can push you back into enemies.

Stage 8 will have you alternating between both quite often, and is one hell of a hard stage. This is where the game goes from cute baby platformer to a platform hell game with no mercy. This is where Alice’s bounciness becomes a problem, there’s so much stuff that requires precision and you bounce so easily. The boss also shoots projectiles which one-hit kill you, so needless to say, I had to farm for lives multiple times, in my winning run I came into the level with 19 lives! (I won with only 6 or so remaining).

Visually, this game looks great, I love how colorful it is, and everything has that Game Boy Color charm to it. With little details and soft colors, I prefer this look over NES games, it seems to me like the GBC actually uses more colors or is significantly more powerful than the NES, but don’t quote me on that, as I have no source on that.

The colors give the game a pastel look, which is cute.
The music is good, it’s the Balloon Fight music from the NES, with some new stuff here and there, it’s all pleasant and what you would expect from a game like this, most of it uses a leitmotif theme (where a recurring melody is utilized in different ways, tempos and rhythms), like Super Mario World, Yoshi’s Story, Super Mario Land 2, Wario Land and many other games.

Alice’s sprite looks a bit weird, but I think that’s just an aftermath of this game actually being an updated re-release of an early Game Boy title. Just like what happened to Link’s Awakening and other games, this one got updated to have color, but it was only released in Japan, while the original apparently wasn’t.

Conclusion

This game was released in 2000 and it’s part of a bit of a trend of the time, where older simpler games got little remakes or new titles in portable consoles. It was a great way to show how far we’ve come, as the games were significantly better than their original counterparts, be it because of beefier hardware, or better understanding on the developers’ part.
It’s the case with Balloon Fight GB, being the best Balloon Fight game. A really neat title, and I bet it would be a nice free eShop game nowadays.

Considering Nintendo is playing around with the mobile market, they could even do a new release of this game and other classic titles, like SEGA does with their SEGA Forever stuff.

I’ve got more to talk about that I thought, considering the simplicity of the game. It’s a nice arcade experience, which we don’t get from Nintendo anymore, I definitely like it.
I’d love to see any new game from Balloon Fight, doesn’t need to be even a re-release, it could just be the equivalent of this for a new system.
Like a cheap eShop game that has a more modern feel to it, 16-bit style visuals and maybe a bit more levels.
But at this point I’m getting beyond the point of this article, this is not about the potential of a modern Balloon Fight or anything like that, it’s about Balloon Fight GB, and I think I’m done here.

I recommend checking it out if you feel like, it’s always interesting to play any more obscure or forgotten Nintendo game, considering how overly popular most of their other series are. I will definitely talk about more Nintendo games in the future, and I will stick to similarly overlooked, obscure or forgotten stuff, because even Nintendo makes niche games sometimes (or at least they used to, I don’t think they really do that anymore, but I’m out of touch, so take that statement with a grain of salt).