Bonk's Revenge (PCE, 1991)
Graphics-7.5 Sound-8 Control-7 Challenge-7
Level Design-7.5 Frustration-8 Fun-7 Originality-5
Overall Score-7
+
Some new mechanics (wall jumping, air-glide using a special flower, petrify enemies by shooting them, fire shot)
Expressive characters
Better variation
Improved background detail and overall shading
Improved climbing and swimming
Some good bosses (large sprites)
Respawn on the spot
Somewhat longer
Warps (unclear how to activate them, can't say no if requirements are met at the end of a round)
New mini-games (gain smileys for a higher end of stage ranking)
Smileys are more important to collect (at the end of a stage you gain a bonus in relation to how many you've gathered, you can gain extra hearts and 1-ups this way), use your teeth to vertically climb poles, improved hit detection overall, choose your own path on final level, get transformed into a crab (to reach certain items)
+/-
Would've been less frustrating overall if you could headbutt to the front when in mid-air (you'll often get pinned down by accidentally stomping the ground, flying enemies often crowd the screen when you're jumping between platforms which forces you to 'ground stomp')
Standard jumps to hit enemies above you takes some getting used to
Life refill between stages depends on your ability to collect smiley faces (requires playing many mini-games this time around)
Easy to rack up extra lives
Air-gliding by spinning was made a bit less efficient
Fewer hidden items (more focus on mini-games instead, these are sometimes hidden)
Slight delay when jumping
-
Trial & error (weird mechanics like bullet deflection with your head, can't look up/down (some leaps of faith), fall into spikes right before the second boss, fishes flying on screen from below, boss patterns)
There's now a small delay after landing which prevents you from jumping again right away (dumb change which makes for less intuitive platforming)
The skeleton birds (bouncing on them doesn't work properly, strange hit detection, they take several hits to kill and often come in packs)
Clunky wall jump controls (set length, inconsistency about needing to press d-pad towards the wall you're bouncing off of)
vertical based jumping (improved when upgraded from eating meat)
Slow acceleration from standing position
No manual running
Still poor jump height control (less of a problem in this game)
Hard to tell if some objects are part of the foreground or not (equal saturation on everything)
Some tedious parts (orange waterfall, underwater segments)
Some tedious bosses (ballerina, final boss)
No difficulty options, somewhat uneven difficulty (sleeping enemies (who don't wake up), final level hands out a bunch of extra hearts, pirate boss, orange waterfall), fewer and somewhat worse cutscenes (lame ending, no funny dialogue), starts with a super easy vertical segment, item containers now spit their items diagonally upwards making them more cumbersome to collect, new generic items (for points - since most of them are different foods you can easily mistake them for actual health power ups), one annoying music track (stage 1-2), lead melodies in some tracks get cut off by certain sfx
Level Design-7.5 Frustration-8 Fun-7 Originality-5
Overall Score-7
+
Some new mechanics (wall jumping, air-glide using a special flower, petrify enemies by shooting them, fire shot)
Expressive characters
Better variation
Improved background detail and overall shading
Improved climbing and swimming
Some good bosses (large sprites)
Respawn on the spot
Somewhat longer
Warps (unclear how to activate them, can't say no if requirements are met at the end of a round)
New mini-games (gain smileys for a higher end of stage ranking)
Smileys are more important to collect (at the end of a stage you gain a bonus in relation to how many you've gathered, you can gain extra hearts and 1-ups this way), use your teeth to vertically climb poles, improved hit detection overall, choose your own path on final level, get transformed into a crab (to reach certain items)
+/-
Would've been less frustrating overall if you could headbutt to the front when in mid-air (you'll often get pinned down by accidentally stomping the ground, flying enemies often crowd the screen when you're jumping between platforms which forces you to 'ground stomp')
Standard jumps to hit enemies above you takes some getting used to
Life refill between stages depends on your ability to collect smiley faces (requires playing many mini-games this time around)
Easy to rack up extra lives
Air-gliding by spinning was made a bit less efficient
Fewer hidden items (more focus on mini-games instead, these are sometimes hidden)
Slight delay when jumping
-
Trial & error (weird mechanics like bullet deflection with your head, can't look up/down (some leaps of faith), fall into spikes right before the second boss, fishes flying on screen from below, boss patterns)
There's now a small delay after landing which prevents you from jumping again right away (dumb change which makes for less intuitive platforming)
The skeleton birds (bouncing on them doesn't work properly, strange hit detection, they take several hits to kill and often come in packs)
Clunky wall jump controls (set length, inconsistency about needing to press d-pad towards the wall you're bouncing off of)
vertical based jumping (improved when upgraded from eating meat)
Slow acceleration from standing position
No manual running
Still poor jump height control (less of a problem in this game)
Hard to tell if some objects are part of the foreground or not (equal saturation on everything)
Some tedious parts (orange waterfall, underwater segments)
Some tedious bosses (ballerina, final boss)
No difficulty options, somewhat uneven difficulty (sleeping enemies (who don't wake up), final level hands out a bunch of extra hearts, pirate boss, orange waterfall), fewer and somewhat worse cutscenes (lame ending, no funny dialogue), starts with a super easy vertical segment, item containers now spit their items diagonally upwards making them more cumbersome to collect, new generic items (for points - since most of them are different foods you can easily mistake them for actual health power ups), one annoying music track (stage 1-2), lead melodies in some tracks get cut off by certain sfx