Bonk and Zonk fanart, by Ashley Davis. The Once Upon a Pixel artist (and Meteor Night collaborator!) has started up a new fanart site called No Marios Allowed, on which she posts drawings of the “coolest videogame characters who don’t get to be under the spotlight too often.”
With only Bomberman and Bonk artwork up, it also kind of seems like there’s an unstated goal to post Hudson characters I really like. And I am in support, it turns out, of blogs that post things I like exclusively.
“Cave People Live Outdoors!” from the Bonk: Brink of Extinction soundtrack by Disasterpeace. Seven tracks from the cancelled XBLA, PSN, WiiWare, and 3DS game have been posted on Bandcamp and can be freely streamed.
And… it’s pretty good! I didn’t have too much confidence in the game before hearing this, but this music totally evokes Bonk, and makes me really want to play the new game. Perfect timing on my part. :(
Bonk doll prototype, made for a promotional campaign sometime in the ’90s. Apparently it was in the possession of TurboZoneDirect until that company ended. I love the rectangular Charlie Brown interpretation of Bonk, though I can’t imagine he’d be any good at headbutting with no neck.
“In the case of Bonk, everything has personality, from the main character to the enemies to the levels themselves. Our adorable, big-eyed caveman hero climbs walls with his teeth, waggles his tiny arms and legs comically while swimming up waterfalls, pops a head vein when doing his trademark move (a ‘bonk,’ in case you were wondering), and transforms into one of two comically monstrous forms to clash with his usually cutesy demeanor.
His iconic enemies — which, in case you couldn’t tell, are freshly-hatched dinosaurs who didn’t bother losing the whole shell — nap, catch butterflies, fish, climb poles in little alpine hats, suntan, and evoke the sense that they’re ‘living’ in a level, rather than placed arbitrarily by some programmer.”
Bob Mackey argues the merits of the Bonk series. If you want to try a Bonk game (and you should, they’re adorable), you can download all three of the Turbografx-16 games, and the futuristic cute-em-up spinoff Air Zonk, on the Wii Virtual Console, or you can set up a Japanese PSN account and download the Bonk games to your PSP or PS3.
Or, if you want to go all out, you can buy a Turbo Duo on eBay, which has the added bonus of being absolutely gorgeous.
Golgo 13: Top Secret Episode ending. I got curious about just who made this stilted, kind of wonderful game, so I watched the credits, then looked up some of the names of the people involved. It turns out that ANGELA, Shoichi Yoshikawa, and Nao Kuramoto all worked together on other games, including the Bonk series starting with 3.
It also turns out, according to this GDRI interview, that they’re all the same person! “Nao Kuramoto is my pen name,” Yoshikawa said. “I’ve been using this name for a long time when I write lyrics and scenarios. ‘Angela’ is also a pen name of mine. I used it when I was working as the director on a project, doing the work I would normally use both names for. In other words, it’s three names for one person.”
While Golgo 13 was made for Seibu Lease, Yoshikawa would go on to work for A.I., which co-developed Bonk 3, along with Bonk games for Super Famicom and Game Boy. All of these games were collaborations between various small developers and publishers, suggesting that the kind of outsourcing done by developers like Platinum and Mistwalker is nothing new.
A.I. also worked on a Bonk game for N64, which ended up being Bomberman Hero!
