Farewell Iwata: Balloon Fight

Balloon Fight
Balloon Arena Fighter
1-2 Players
System: Nintendo Entertainment System
Developer: Nintendo R&D1
Year of Release: 1985
Beaten: Years ago on Animal Crossing!

On July 11th, 2015, Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo, passed away suddenly. He contributed to several quality games early in his career and rose through the ranks quickly from programmer, to president of HAL Labs, to president of Nintendo. I can't find many games that he was the lead programmer of, as he mostly helped solve complex problems with other games. The earliest game I could find that he was mostly responsible for is Balloon Fight, a quirky game that always stuck out to me for some reason.

The concept is incredibly simple, it's basically Joust really, as a balloon fighter you have two balloons strapped to your body. By flapping your arms you can fly around, with the overall goal of popping the other balloons before you get popped. The controls are simple, but the physics are solid and lend themselves to hectic gameplay. The edges of the screen obey "arcade law", meaning that they just scroll to the other side magically allowing surprise attacks, or quick escapes. Even better there is a two player cooperative mode. As you progress through the levels bonus stages show up wherein you must pop as many balloons as possible. The simple gameplay might not lend itself to long play sessions, but I've found myself come back to the game from time to time for a brief bit of balloon battling. The main draw is really how good the physics feel, in fact, the physics were so good they were borrowed for the underwater levels of Super Mario Bros!

There's another mode, Balloon Trip, which sees the player constantly scrolling through an obstacle course, popping balloons along the way for a higher score. Balloon Trip is an excellent example of trying to beat your previous high score, "I know I can get further..." push me to give it another couple tries at least. The obstacles consist of floating orbs of electricity, some of which move around. If you let your fighter stray too low for too long a giant fish pops up and eats them. While speaking of obstacles, the enemies in the "main" mode can only harm you if they bump into a balloon, otherwise you both just harmless bounce off each other, this can be utilized to send them into the brink below or just to buy some more time. Again, nothing too complex about this game, but everything gels together perfectly.

It's fun and a perfect example of gameplay first design principles. I don't know what else to say about this game... so, what about it's legacy? Balloon Fighter actually started out as a Nintendo Vs. System arcade game. The game lacked Balloon Trip, but the map layouts are all different and can scroll vertically, making the differences noteworthy. I'm not really sure how to go about playing this version of the game nowadays though. A Gameboy sequel, Balloon Kid, released in 1990 which I only played briefly. Basically the main characters brother floats away on some balloons, and as his loving sister you... float after him I guess? Fucking logic right? The game plays out like a segmented Balloon Trip from what I saw, it played alright, but didn't feel as solid to me as the original. A Balloon Trip mode is also included if you'd rather just play til you lose. There's even a two player battle mode! For some reason the game released in Japan only as an odd port for the Famicom Disk System with a Hello Kitty makeover. Ten years later they got the game untarnished as Balloon Fight GB, not really sure if anything was added or changed in this port.

From here Balloon Fight has mostly been hidden from the limelight. It was one of the games to get ported to the doomed e-Reader series of NES games. It was kind of neat, you could scan in five cards and play an NES game on your GBA! I have Donkey Kong, and it plays just fine. The game was also playable through Animal Crossing, there were several NES games you could find or purchase which I really enjoyed as a kid. Actually, I think Animal Crossing was the first time I'd really seen Balloon Fight. The latest full release (ignoring virtual console releases) is a real oddity. Club Nintendo of Japan had a history of getting a lot of really cool rewards that other territories never really lived up to. In this case, Tingle's Balloon Fight, was made available for the Japanese Club Nintendo. I haven't had a chance to play this game, though I'd love to, apparently it's just a remake of the original NES game with Tingle as the playable character, along with some unlockable art gallery content.

Aside from some cameos Balloon Fight hasn't really shown up in a while. Apparently in Melee Balloon Fighter was considered as a character, but Ice Climbers won out instead. Either character honestly would have been awesome. Since them some more references to Balloon Fight have leaked into Smash, music, the big fish that will eat you, trophies, the flipper, and even a really fun stage in the 3DS version (why the hell aren't the maps available on Wii U!!). WarioWare has shown the series some love by way of 9-Volt's minigames, usually forcing you to survive a brief stint of Balloon Trip. I think most recently Balloon Fight had some representation via a Nintendo Land attraction. Balloon Trip Breeze is essentially Balloon Trip, yet again, only this time you control your character with the breeze as dictated by stylus strokes. Unfortunately most Nintendo Land attractions fell prey to "LOOK AT WHAT WE CAN DO!" syndrome new gimmicky Nintendo consoles usually produce in the early days. The Nintendo DS had several of these, just as an aside. The mini-game is alright but lacks that sticking power.

As mentioned above Balloon Fighter has been considered for inclusion in Super Smash Bros. in the past. And as there's a currently ongoing character suggestion poll for Smash Bros 4, some people have decided to try and get Balloon Fighter made as a DLC character, and honestly, I'm fully behind that. I've wanted him as a character since rumors of his possible inclusion in Melee came out.

Really, though, I think the best thing Nintendo could do is give the series the "New" treatment. While I don't necessarily agree with how poorly most of the "New" games are (New Mario and New Yoshi's Island both feel kind of soulless), I think the marketing idea has great untapped potential. Imagine Nintendo reviving several older series, like Ice Climbers, Excitebike (which honestly they kind have done this with World Rally), Clu Clu Land and even Balloon Fight. Modernize the look, keep the basic gameplay intact, especially the physics in the case of Balloon Fight, and after a short set of levels that closely mimics the original game, introduce new elements. Kind of like how Donkey Kong '94 handled things! This is something I've been expecting Nintendo to jump on since the first New Super Mario Bros. I thought that was going to set a trend for revitalizing old franchises. There's still time though!

Sorry for that aside, just something that's been on my mind for a while. To bring this back around to the somber reason for even revisiting this classic, Satoru Iwata truly loved video games. I'm not going to pretend to know very much about him (hell I never even read any of his reportedly fantastic Iwata Asks series!), but from everything I've read throughout the years, and especially over the last few days, he was a man who truly loved his craft. Disappointing his parents he dedicated his life to video games, believing that eventually they would be regarded as a legitimate medium, his father ignored him for a long time, but, as he predicted, video games did eventually garner recognition by the masses. Honestly, mostly in part by him. The Wii and DS both really brought games to the masses, which lead to many good and terrible things, this was still a massive accomplishment no matter how you cut it. Back in his programming days though he seemingly only developed a scant few games for Nintendo, Balloon Fight, NES Open Tournament Golf, and Earthbound. Though he helped develop the battle system for Pokemon Stadium, by manually going through the coding of Red and Blue to figure it out. Later he also developed the compression technology that allowed Pokemon Gold and Silver to have two regions in it, a feature that has been missing from every future title (barring the remakes of course). A lot of other games owed him special thanks, or he was directly involved in as a supervisor. If nothing else, he was truly dedicated to his craft and gave it his all until the very end. His health had been in decline for a long while, but even though he had to miss some presentations he continued to do everything that his health allowed. Satoru Iwata, you are the model of a respectable businessman. Thank you for everything you accomplished Iwata-san.