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PAX Impressions: Bonk: Brink of Extinction | PSNStores

PAX Impressions: Bonk: Brink of Extinction

Posted by on September 12th, 2010 | 0 Comments | Tags: , ,

While North American PSN users continue to clamor over the lack of PC Engine support in the states, Japanese users continue enjoying classic after classic week after week. All hope is not lost, though, friends, as there is a remake of Bonk being digitally distributed. We began hearing of Bonk: Brink of Extinction close to a year ago. It’s been all quiet on the Bonk-front since then, but last week Chris and I got our hands on the latest demo of this TurboGrafx HD remake. Now, I’ve never played a Bonk game before (fanboy repellent: activate), so I’ll report on what features this version of the game has and how it plays, etc.

But first, a gameplay video:

Bonk is an action platformer. In this game, you start in an overview map, a la Super Mario World. This version of the game supports two player pop-in coop, local or online, which is really cool. Chris and I played a couple of levels together and it was definitely fun. You can double jump, which is always welcome in a platformer, in my opinion.

Juggling enemies is fun to the max

There are secret levels hidden within each stage. We played one that reminded me of the Donkey Kong Country secret levels from back in the day. Also, there are a handful of powers you can collect, each of which changes your hair color. After gaining a power, you can later switch to it whenever you please. The only powerup we saw was the ice breath. There was some light puzzling associated with the ice breath powerup, and I’m sure the game will have some secret levels and bosses that require hair-color shuffling to discover/defeat.

Unfortunately, the game will be releasing on the XBLA a bit before it releases on the PSN. Since Bomberman: Battlefest has the same sort of deal going on, I’m sure Microsoft is still finding ways to pay for timed exclusives. Regardless, the game looks and plays great and, judging by the overworld map we saw, it’ll likely have a whole bunch of content for digitally distributed title. Stay tuned.