Balloon Kid: Gone with the wind

Balloon Kid was not my Xth Game Boy game; instead, it belonged to my sister, who undoubtedly bought it based on its cute premise. A game starring a little girl floating around and collecting balloons had to be adorable and heart-warming, right? Heck, NO. A million times no. Forget Balloon Kid's lovely gameplay proposition: this is an exacting and nerve-racking Platformer that packs all the nastiness and viciousness of Nintendo Hard NES games and sneaks it into the Game Boy under the most misleading kawaii guise imaginable. Just like her namesake, Alice is in for a most unpleasant trip — and so is the player who controls her. Or tries to; but more on that very soon.

Die, you stupid fish.

"Platformer" is too simplistic a term to describe little Alice's aerial adventures, actually. Just like fellow 1990er Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle, Balloon Kid is a game that blends several playing styles and is unafraid to experiment with gameplay mechanics. If there were ever such a thing as a hardcore Platformer without platforms, then BK is that game: it requires an insane amount of focus, sangfroid and precision to be navigated properly, which ironically makes it a somewhat unfit proposition for its kiddy target audience. It's also a weird floating/hovering simulator that requires constant player input. Alice doesn't fly on her own and sinks like a stone lest the A button is diligently pressed; then, constant height and speed adjustments must be made to make her go beyond obstacles. The game's physics are extremely consistent and cohesive and are actually quite stellar for the time; but they are also really hard to master, all the more so as they can be counter-intuitive even to the most seasoned Platformer aficionado. Alice is floating around, which means that there is a certain inertia at work in all her moves; and that parameter must be taken into account at all times, which generally involves a high degree of move planning. BK also packs a distinctive Die-and-Retry flavour: level layouts are always the same, down to enemy placements, and they must be learnt by heart to be navigated safely. There are also more random and outlandish gameplay elements at work, such as the highly unusual right-to-left scrolling (I don't think I ever encountered another Platformer that makes the player crawl levels that way, and that scrolling sometimes feel downright counter-intuitive), the fact that screen boundaries act like physical objects and can be used to rebound or the fact that bosses must usually be beaten by resorting to Alice's seldom-used ground move pool, whose physics are downright wonky.

Balloon Kid is also the most striking illustration ever of the "Perfect And Encompassing Level 1 That Makes All Subsequent Levels Pointless" (a concept that can also be found in the original Sonic and its lush Green Hill Zone); in fact, I seriously suspect that BK single-handedly created that very concept. The first level of that game is a monument of wholesomeness and heart-warming perfection, with whimsical graphics, a lovely and highy evocative theme track and a pitch-perfect balance between challenge and fun. This first level is the one that draw me back to the game time and time again as a kid; had BK started right with its gloomy second level, I'm not sure I would have bothered replaying it even once. Now obviously, that first level is also a big fat lie, because it's in no way representative of the game as a whole; and yet, it somehow feels more perfect and fulfilling than all the other levels combined. Talk about burning all your ammo before the fight even starts.

Although BK is a very good game for its time and the hardware it was released on and still holds up pretty well to this day, it suffers from a variety of shortcomings that prevents it from reaching a cult classic status. For one thing, it's painfully linear and streamlined, with little room for gameplay variety and improvements. I blame this linearity solely on the automatic scrolling; the presence of such a feature implies that no matter how well the player masters BK, playthroughs will always last roughly the same amount of time and unfold in the exact same way. Player performance has virtually no impact on the game beyond making sure that the last boss will be reached, and that destroys most of BK's potential replay value. Then, there is the burning issue of the gameplay being skin-deep only: once you peel off BK's difficulty, which is sometimes so insane that it makes the game look like a parody of Nintendo Hard NES games, you're left with very little to sink your teeth into. At its core, BK is really nothing more than a giant, glorified QTE: you're at the game's beck and call, floating around in a virtual gameplay void and trying to stay alive by working your way around a vast array of fixed hazards. And once again, there is very little replay value to be found once you've successfully learnt to circumvent said vast array of fixed hazards.

Despite BK's lack of depth and infuriating difficulty, I found myself purchasing it not once, but twice over the course of my gaming career: the first time was when I was a teenager and wanted to own my own copy of the game and try my hardest to finish it (for the record, I failed), and the second time was a couple of years ago for collection's sake. I can polish off Balloon Kid without too much hassle these days, although it's far from being a personal cult classic; but I still deem it highly valuable as another snapshot of 1990s gaming with an interesting potpourri of gameplay features and a widely unusual gameplay premise. Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!