The first mascot in video game history was probably Pac-man. But not the current one, with its round body and three-dimensional arms, no, but the original, the yellow ball with a triangular opening for the mouth that has been synonymous with Namco since May 1980. And its success led other companies to take the creation of mascots seriously. Nintendo had -oh, surprise- Super Mario, LucasArts had Chuck the Plant, Sega had Sonic (and Segata Sanshiro, but that’s another story)… And Hudson Soft had Bonk.
David Bonk-ano
Surely if you are older than the sun, you will perfectly recognize Bonk, a caveman and big-headed boy who once became an early video game legend. And the curious thing is that he didn’t even start as a playable character, but in the pages of a comic. More specifically, one from the official PC Engine magazine (better known in the United States as Turbografx-16) in Japan. His name was simply a play on words: PC Genjin, which translates to “PC Caveman”. Oh, “PC,” besides the obvious, means “Pithecanthropus Computerurus.” You can’t say they didn’t think it through.
In the late 80s, making a game didn’t mean mortgaging seven years of your time, your millions, and your resources to gamble on one card: it was about titles that were simple to make, which, if they failed, might only cost a disappointment, so it was common for all kinds of licenses to come out, with more or less developed gameplay. In the end, it was worth it. It is normal, then, that at Hudson Soft they decided to make a game about the character for PC Engine, considering that it was successful in the comics… and that many players believed it was an announcement of something that was to come.
Although globalization has made us all know the character as Bonk, the truth is that in Europe it was released under the name PC Kid because the word, in UK English, has a rather naughty meaning. Be that as it may, the only certain thing is that on December 15, 1989, Bonk appeared for the first time in a video game created for PC Engine. It was a prehistoric platformer where the protagonist hit the bad guys with his giant head, and it immediately became the mascot of NEC Home Electronics, the company that manufactured the console. However, no one imagined that it would fall before its time after 16 different models were released to the market. And then, Bonk was free to headbutt.
Jurassic Bonk
That first game, Bonk’s Adventure, also ended up appearing on NES and Amiga, and quickly gained fame. So much so that in 1991 its sequel, Bonk’s Revenge, was released (which, like the previous one, had a Game Boy version with the same title but completely different in every way), followed in 1993 by Bonk 3. But, by that time, the PC Engine was already in its final moments and could not recover (well, big-headed) despite being one of the most original titles in the series, where the character could grow or shrink depending on the candies he took, in addition to being able to play it cooperatively.
NEC endured the harsh blow of losing its console, and Hudson Soft, which was the brilliant mind behind the original launch, also managed to hold on by forgetting about making consoles and focusing solely on video game production, pivoting among the -once- competitors. Thus, Super Bonk would appear for the first time on Super Nintendo in 1994, followed by a sequel in 1995 that never left Japan. Add a collection of minigames for Game Boy and… Basically, that was it. Six years of games, one after another, and its reign ended.
It didn’t have to be that way. In fact, Hudson was preparing a version for the Virtual Boy, but we all know what happened with that devilish invention from Nintendo, right? All kinds of sequels have been announced (Bonk 3D, Bonk: Brink of Extinction, Bonk IV – which would be an RPG -…) but none have come to fruition. Since then, it has been reduced to a decorative element in the Japanese app Do The Hudson, a simple collection of minigames.
It’s curious that, even in the era of nostalgia, there has only been one attempt at resurrection, in 2006, when Bonk’s Return was released for mobile phones, a lost final game where the protagonist was controlled – to give you an idea of its antiquity – using the keys: 4 and 6 to move, 1, 2, and 3 to jump, etcetera. Now that several titles from the saga are available on virtual consoles, is it perhaps time to give it the recognition it deserves with a new title where, this time, a fortune can be spent? After almost 20 years without a new Bonk game and with the franchise forgotten by almost everyone… Why doesn’t Konami, which absorbed Hudson, give it a little love if late revivals are still the order of the day? We will keep waiting. What else can we do?
