Destroy Communist Bases. Fight the Heavyweight Champ. Welcome to the 1980s.

NES Catalog #062-63

Nintendo is Great is a Substack devoted to exploring the world of Nintendo - their games, their consoles, their merchandise - in mostly chronological order, starting with the NES and continuing to the upcoming Switch 2.

Some posts are free, some, like this one, are for paid subscribers only. Don’t forget to sign up below. Thanks for reading!

---

---

Raid on Bungeling Bay

---

PUBLISHER: Broderbund

DEVELOPER: Hudson Soft

RELEASE DATE: Feb. 22nd, 1985 (JP), Sept. 1987 (US)

ALSO AVAILABLE ON: Arcade, Commodore 64, MSX2

---

Raid on Bungeling Bay is a strategy game, the kind where you supposedly have to plan out your attack before you make it, take out the patrol boats and the satellite towers before you hit your main target. In practice, though, it doesn’t matter whether you prepare in advance or just barrel recklessly towards the enemy. Fighter jets will always be called in, all sights pointed on you.

You control a helicopter, and your goal is to take out six factories (presumably Communist) over a wide, wide patch of land; the instruction manual claims that the playfield size is 100 times the screen size, and that’s no joke. The helicopter’s equipped with bullets to take out the smaller obstacles – tanks, patrol boats, jets, satellites, etc. – while the bombs are for the factories. Your bombs are limited to nine, though, so if you run out or your health is wearing down, land the helicopter on the aircraft carrier to replenish.

---

All those numbers mean somethin’, by gar.

---

Destroy the patrol boats before you find the factory or don’t, the fighter jets always come after you, regardless. Shoot ‘em down, hope more aren’t called, and resume bombing the factory. Every so often, jets will also attack your aircraft carrier, so you gotta shoot them down as well. Once you destroy all six factories, the next round begins with a higher difficulty.