Game: Air Zonk

Air Zonk was made by Hudson Soft for the Turbografx-16 (PC Engine for you purists) and released in North America in 1992. The game centres around the cybornetic decendant of former Turbografx mascot Bonk. Unlike his predeccesor however, Air Zonk is not a platformer. Instead, Air zonk is a game in the scrolling shoot 'em up or "shmup" genre. Levels consist of scrolling from left to right and shooting down any enemies that get in your way - similarily to other games you may be familiar with such as R-type or Gradius. There are many times many games of this particular genre for the Turbografx-16, for this one to truely stand out it has the hook of being able to choose a partner character at the beginning of each level which will aide Zonk when he gets a particular power-up and if Zonk finds that particular power-up again Zonk and his partner will merge into a third character - each with their own new special attack. Aside from this power-up, Zonk can also collect new weapons such as boxing gloves, playing cards and metal jaws.

the graphics in this game are bright colourful and have that uniquely zany japanese pixel art that so many fans of retro games love. Backgrounds and foregrounds scale across the screen to good effect for giving the game a quasi 3D feeling. The characters are largely updated versions of the Bonk enemies but rather than being robots they're dinosaurs and rather than wearing eggshells on their heads they wear buckets.

The sound is all solid and catchy and make good use of the Turbografx-16 chipset. Largely its all very cheery and upbeat but that fits well with the colourful visuals found within the game.

If you're a fan of shmups or games with that zany Japanese "Je ne c'est qois" then you may enjoy this game. If you're looking for a real challenge then you may not. It gets pretty tough in parts while playing in "Spicy" mode but this isn't the bullet hell you'll find in the more hardcore shmups like Ikaruga. To find this game your best bet is either eBay or to download it on the Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console. There are many shmups for the TG-16 but I feel this is one of the finest.