Balloon Fight is No-Holds-Barred, Helium Popping Action
NES Catalog #018
Nintendo is Great is a Substack devoted to playing and exploring every game ever released for a Nintendo console/handheld in chronological order. Some posts are for free, some are for paid subscribers only. Don’t forget to sign up below. Thanks for reading!
Balloon Fight
PUBLISHER: Nintendo
DEVELOPER: Nintendo/HAL Labs
RELEASE DATE: Jan. 22nd, 1985 (JP), June 1986 (US), March 12th, 1987 (EU)
ALSO AVAILABLE ON: Arcade, Sharp X1, NEC PC-8801, Game & Watch, Watara SuperVision, Sharp Zaurus, eReader, Gamecube (via Animal Crossing), Game Boy Advance, Virtual Console (Wii, 3DS, Wii U), DS (via Tingle’s Balloon Fight & Tingle’s Balloon Trip of Love), NES Classic, Switch (via Arcade Archives), Nintendo Switch Online
Balloon Fight ushers in 1986 on the Nintendo Entertainment System with a thunderous pop!
You are the Balloon Fighter, a creature of unknown origin with two balloons strapped to his back. Did he put the balloons there? Is he fighting other ballooned creatures of his own accord? Is some other larger ballooned creature making him fight? Who can say. Balloon Fight is a simple arcade title with no story, as was the style at the time. Make up your own sordid tale and enjoy!
The Balloon Fighter might have a mysterious past, but his objective is clear: pop the balloons of the other creatures before they pop his balloons. Whereas the Balloon Fighter's two balloons are supple and bright red, his opponents get around with one languid balloon of various colors. The pink-ballooned creatures are slow and meandering, which makes their balloons easy to pop. The green ballooners have a bit more pep in their step and are slightly more difficult to pop. Finally, the yellow balloonies are vicious, aggressive, and fight with reckless abandon. Pop them first, lest ye be popped.
The stages are simple, one-screen affairs and consist of: small platforms, a pool of water at the bottom, clouds, bubbles, and stars that pepper the sky, and the occasional propeller that, once touched, flips the balloon fighters all around the stage. Most of that is self-explanatory: ground good, water bad, propeller terrible. The clouds intermittently release flashes of lightning that buzz around the screen and, if ingested, kill your fighter and his balloons in one strike. Bubbles provide a cheery, happy noise and some extra points.
When you hit an opponent's balloon, they don't die right away. Rather, a parachute opens and they drift slowly towards either a platform, the ground, or impending death in the water below. Pop their chute to finish the job. If they land on a platform and you fail to hit them, they'll pump their balloons back up again. The dastards! The water drowns them just fine, but adding insult to injury is a giant fish who emerges from the water to eat them (or you, depending on how low you fly).
Every third stage is a bonus stage comprised of pipes that release balloons at various intervals. Pop all the balloons to get extra bonus points and bragging rights for at least three minutes. Strangely, unlike nearly all arcade titles, no amount of points will gain your Balloon Fighter an extra life. Sure, six figure numbers look good at the top of the screen and in my bank account, but if they don't do anything, what's the point?
Option A is a one-player romp through twelve unique stages, followed by repeating stages that presumably have no end. Fun? You bet. Balloon Fight's off-kilter physics may have their roots in Joust, but the former's protagonist controls appropriately and is considerably more enjoyable to play than its inspiration. Option B throws you and a second player into the same stage at the same time. You can choose to play nice with one another and go after the other fighters together, or you can play every fighter for himself and slaughter anyone – including your friend – who gets in your way. The latter will end quickly and hilariously, but who knows how far you'll get if you work together.
Then there's Option C, “Balloon Trip,” an absolutely brilliant one-of-a-kind journey through the galaxy. You control your Balloon Fighter through an automatically scrolling screen, filled with moving lightning and some green balloons. There is no ground below, only water and imminent death (the fish is back, waiting to gobble you whole). Also, you start your trip at Rank 47. Who's ranking you and why? Just another of Balloon Fight's devious mysteries.
Your mission in “Balloon Trip”: pop as many balloons as you can, lower your rank, don't absorb lightning. Each balloon you pop lowers your rank by 1 until you reach Rank 01. The Trip then continues until you make a mistake or turn off the console. This is easier said than done. Only true Balloon Fighters with nerves of steel and fingers of might will achieve the coveted Rank 01. But what a thrill to try and try again! Weaving around the constantly moving lightning while narrowly grabbing a balloon still feels so right nearly forty years later.
Balloon Fight remains one of Nintendo's premiere early titles for the NES. Its simple arcade gameplay is enhanced through clever visual comedy and wise decisions like two-player simultaneous gameplay, enjoyable bonus stages, and the flawless Balloon Trip. Truly a classic title and a perfect way to kick off the NES in 1986
B
What I Wrote About Balloon Fight in 2011
“At a time when the NES hadn’t reached its potential, and Super Mario Bros. was still the most complex game available, Balloon Fight was just OK. As of 2011, I only like it because I grew up with it, and because I can still take out those dastardly balloon freaks with one hand behind my back (Getting to level 25 is a regular occurrence, as is cruising my way through Balloon Trip until I’m ranked number 01). Otherwise, it’s uneventful.”
B-
Solid game, and one that I owned from close to the beginning -- surprised how harsh your Questicle review was. I think it may be the first truly good 2-player NES game (I love Baseball but am reluctant to call it "truly good"). Even if it faded some compared to later, better 2-player games, I recall friends and I occasionally popping it in until the end of the NES lifespan.
Without that second player, the standard 1-player mode is fairly blah. But ah, Balloon Trip. I introduced a friend to Balloon Trip around 2015 and he became briefly obsessed with it (he was looking for difficult, classic arcade-style challenges). So I know that it's not just nostalgia. I could imagine Balloon Trip as an arcade game that released in the early 80s and that was remembered as a classic to this day, but buried as mode #3 within a lesser-known early NES title, it's still kind of a hidden gem. It's one of those things that I can just mindlessly jump into whenever I have a few minutes on my Switch and end up getting surprisingly engaged. I only wish that the size of the hitboxes were more obvious.