Bonk's Adventure (NES) Playthrough

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Published on September 9, 2025 1:02:03 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON8p72VzdlE

Game:

Bonk's Adventure (1989)

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Playthrough of Bonk's Adventure, Hudson Soft's 1994 platformer for the NES.

Bonk’s Adventure for the NES, released by Hudson Soft in 1994, is a late entry in the console’s library and a port of the earlier TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine classic. Although the original version debuted five years earlier, this NES adaptation retains much of the core experience, offering players a faithful recreation of Bonk’s first adventure.

The game stars Bonk, a prehistoric hero with a comically oversized head, who battles his way through dinosaurs, plants, and mechanical creatures to rescue Princess Za from the villainous King Drool. Bonk’s primary attack is his headbutt, used both on the ground and in the air, giving combat a unique style compared to other platformers of its time. Players can also chain headbutts together while jumping to hover briefly, adding a simple but effective layer of movement strategy.

Structurally, the NES port follows the same level progression and boss encounters as the TurboGrafx-16 version. Levels are colorful and imaginative, ranging from grassy prehistoric fields to volcanic caverns and mechanical lairs. Power-ups come in the form of meat, which temporarily powers up Bonk and changes his attack strength, adding an element of risk and reward to exploration. Despite the NES’s hardware limitations compared to the TurboGrafx-16, the developers managed to capture much of the original’s charm through simplified but recognizable sprites and level layouts.

From a gameplay perspective, Bonk’s Adventure on NES offers solid platforming that remains accessible to players of varying skill levels. The controls are straightforward, with responsive jumping and attacking that make the experience easy to pick up. The game’s pace is slower than some of its contemporaries, emphasizing careful timing of jumps and attacks rather than speed, which gives it a distinctive identity within the platforming genre.

While the NES version does not match the audiovisual fidelity of its source material, it remains a competent and enjoyable port. Its late release means it arrived when the NES was already being phased out in favor of more advanced systems, which likely limited its reach. Nevertheless, for platforming enthusiasts, the title represents a notable example of how developers worked within hardware constraints to adapt a more advanced game to an earlier system.

In summary, Bonk’s Adventure for NES stands as a faithful if scaled-down port of the TurboGrafx-16 classic. It preserves the quirky personality, core mechanics, and level design that made the original stand out, while naturally sacrificing some visual and audio quality due to the limitations of the 8-bit platform. Today, it remains a fun but somewhat rare entry in the NES library—an appealing choice for collectors and platform fans alike.