Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Release Date: June 1986
While 1986 was a busy year for the NES, it wasn't because of the games Nintendo released for it. 1986 was the first year to see third party support for the console. The fact that Bandai, Capcom, and Data East were now on board greatly improved the machine's chances of succeeding. However, as far as first party support goes it was probably the weakest year until the 90s. Since they didn't even go national until 1986 I suppose this makes sense. Most people hadn't even got to play any of the launch titles until well into the year, and as I have already written there were many good original games to select from. 1987 would be the watershed year that saw Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, and Kid Icarus make their debuts. 1986 was relegated to mostly arcade conversions. While it was nice to get such a good home version of Donkey Kong and Popeye, these were mostly games that people likely already had on an earlier console. One of the few original first party games to come out was Balloon Fight, and it's original in only the most liberal sense. In reality it plays almost identical to Williams' classic game Joust. It's a rare case of Nintendo copying some else before becoming the company that would get copied. I'm a little surprised they didn't get sued and are able to keep releasing the game over and over. I guess they changed just enough to make it okay.
The way it works is that you are a floating man with two balloons taking down groups of other men wearing single balloons. The object is to hit them higher than they hit you and thus popping their balloons. If you are reduced to only one balloon flying becomes more difficult. Hitting them again will net you some bonus points. Getting a high score is the main goal of this mode. The main difference between this game mode and Joust is that there are no eggs to collect and there is a greater variety of level layouts. The original Joust used the same layout every time and only varied in the number of platforms that were available. Balloon Fight is a richer world with platforms in all different places. It's still a single screen game, but it does more with the one screen than Joust did. Still the basic gameplay is the same.
What sets this game apart is the balloon trip mode. In this mode you move along a scrolling screen collecting balloons and avoiding electrified walls. My favorite part about it is the ranking counter in the top right corner. I love rankings in general of course, but it's a good way to have a goal. I considered this game beat when I scrolled the levels in game A and got to first place in balloon trip. It's not an easy task either. You know it's hard when you get points for simply surviving. Still I persevered and managed to get all the way to first place. It was very satisfying.
So Balloon Fight is fun even if half the game is extremely derivative. I would say it's better than any home versions of Joust out at the time even though the 2600 version is a lot of fun. It's one of those arcade games that doesn't take too long to play and is easy to improve upon. I think it would take a long time for me to reach my ceiling in this game. This is a game that I always enjoy more than I expect, and it's easily going into the green section.
NES Quality Percentage: 12/21 or 57.14%
Screenshots are from mobygames.com
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