Frankie1337 is back with another Radical Rom Review.

This time he's taking on the likes of B.C. Kid aka Bonk's Adventure to us American's who owned TG-16's back in the day.

The fun lovin' Bonk was perhaps one of my favorite characters outside the world of Nintendo and Sega at the time.  Cracked me up everytime I'd get him to smash something with his head.

Read on to see Frankie1337's review of the game and head on over to Radical Rom Reviews for more Radical Rom Review Rhetoric. 

Known to American gamers as Bonk's Adventure, and elsewhere as a number of different titles (B.C. Kid, PC Kid, etc), this arcade version is hardly known to anybody. I was trying to do some research about the game online, and all I found was a blurb here or there that simply acknowledged it's existence. All the major resources out there focus purely on the console versions, leaving this arcade version out to rot. I don't understand why, though; whatever title you want to give it, this caveman game will knock your socks off right back to the stone age!

You know, I've really got to quit with these cheeky openings. It's just, God, they feel so good and right, man. It's like how I get my fix these days. That's the stuff, give daddy some more...hoooo yeah...

o_0

Moving right along...

That opening was also bad because it's a bit misleading - I really can't give B.C. Kid my wholehearted recommendation without prefacing it a bit. So, let the prefacing begin!

Most of the issues I have with the game are fairly minor, but the biggie is just how frieking difficult it is. Yeah yeah I know, "BAAAAAAWWW it's too hard!!!", get over it. Complaining about difficulty is perfectly legitimate as long as you're not just secretly complaining about your lack of skills as a gamer, and come on now, look at how you're dealing with here. They don't call me Frankie Leet for nothin'.

Haters just need to realize that there are different kinds of difficulty. There's the kind that is perfectly manageable through memorization, skills, patience, and practice, like Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars and Aurail. Then, you have a totally different beast, the kind of game that's hard because of poor design choices and unmanageable cheapness. Unfortunately, B.C. Kid falls squarely into the latter category.

The good news is that it doesn't go there until the later levels. In fact, the earlier ones can be downright pleasant platforming experiences. Skip ahead to the later ones, though, and get ready for flaming hordes of Death Incarnate to come give you an un-lubed pleasure party.

Just take a look while I walk you through the first three levels, and then skip ahead to a later boss fight.

See, most everything else about the game is actually pretty ace. The graphics are bright and have a likable art style, the controls are responsive and allow for pinpoint platforming, there are some cool powerups to get, and it has a few things that differentiate itself from the Alex Kidd's and Mario's of the world.

In a feature that's not found in any other version of the game (that I know of), you're charged with the task of carrying a ball of some kind from one end of the level to the other. Whether it be a football, basketball, soccer ball, or whatever, they can all be knocked away from you by enemies and then, with quick reflexes and some luck, picked back up again. At the end of the level you're given a goal that you try to reach at it's highest point (via some conveniently placed springs). It doesn't do anything for you besides heaping on a whole lot of points, but it's still a nice touch that I really enjoyed.

 

Other than that, you're just looking at a well made (aside from the previously mentioned irks) action platformer that delivers on old-school gaming goodness. And even with said irks, it's easy to get quickly back to the action, especially if you mess with the dipswitch settings I talked about in the video. So, you might be dying a lot, but it still doesn't drain all of the fun out of it.

Highly flawed and not for everybody, B.C. Kid still pulls away from the pack as a platformer that all hardcore fans of the genre should check out.

4/5

 

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