Bomb Kick (Arcade)

Today i show you bootleg arcade game with stolen assets from other game and bombs. Lots of them. Here's Yunsung Elec©'s Bomb Kick (1998).

They're posing like for Brawler game with high kick pose or flexing his arm. But sadly this isn't brawler game. There's not backstory  at all. Just game demonstration on attract mode. Let's start the game and get into the character select screen, shall we?  

First we have Toto who's likely reject character from Captain Tsubasa manga. But he keep his optimistic high and smiles like any optimist anime character. Perhaps, he can see bright future after starring this bootleg arcade game. Sadly, he isn't seen anywhere else. His career ends in his very first debut. Such a pity. His ability is speeding, meaning he has the highest movement speed than other character but only by 10 points. So it's kind of pointless ability.

In the middle, there's Jenny, who has strange hair as if he's in the wind tunnel for hours. But judging by wings on her back, she's a fairy. It's kind of sensible for fairy to have inhuman hair style, i think. Her ability is flying, which is multi-jump! Double jump always useful and infinite multi-jump is dramatically more useful, even.

Last one, we got Mola the Polar Bear. But i like to call him Bernard the bear for fun. His ability is skating which is slide with his ice skate shoes and make him move twice faster in one horizontal direction. But when he's skating, you can't make him stop in the middle. So once he's skating he will bump into wall or into enemies. Not effective method of dodging if you ask me. Unlike other character Mola don't kick his bomb instead throwing it because he wears the ice skate shoes. It goes without saying that kicking something is hard if you wear ice skate shoes. Do you ever see Ice Hockey match where the players kick the puck and not using hockey stick? Exactly!    

 

Usually, i pick Toto. But Jenny has more interesting ability. Mola is disqualified because he isn't stay true to the game title.

So, you can choose level to your heart content. But for easier and more chronological storytelling, i pick the level order from left to right.    

 

The control as follows: Joystick to move your bomber around. First button to kick/throw bomb in front of your bomber. 2nd button to jump. From this screenshot, you should know that the game is Bubble Bobble clone. Much like Tumblepop or Snow Bros. But you have direct attack method. Theme for this level is based on "Journey to the West" story.  There's Zhu Bajie, the pig man and Sha Wujing in the middle of my bombing area.

Also like in other game of its peer, skin contact with enemies is lethal. So don't try to touch them.

 

And the horse is there too. Two of it even. I don't know why he looks like fusion experiment between wine gourd and horse. It looks funny. The main key of success in this game is to destroy enemy generators. In some of Bubble Bobble clone, some level have 1 or 2 enemy generators. But in this game there's always enemy generators on every level, at least 2!

 

I don't think there's flying centipede in "Journey to the West" story. Or maybe it's one of millions demon who want to eat the monk on his quest

There's the star of "Journey to the West": Sun Wukong and he's about to ram me over. Sniper_jeers08.wav

Of course there's the monk, Tang Seng. He can shoot giant laser like Ryan in Dragoon Might. It begs question. Why he needs escort from Zhu Bajie, Sha Wujing, and Sun Wukong when he's capable of disintegrating his foe with holy laser?

But he's not the only one with secret weapon, I do have too. By pressing 3rd button, i activate my limited special bomb for limited duration. Not only it makes me invincible temporarily but also it follows me anywhere i move. That explains why the huge beam has some jagged section. Each character has different special bomb. I think Jenny has the weakest ones but her bomb have unlimited horizontal range.

You can see how many special bomb you have left in corner left bottom. I reckon that special bomb icon is ripped from any Psikyo vertical shooter game.

There's item pickup called Time Bomb that change your standard red bomb into smaller black bomb. To be honest, i have no idea what's the benefit of that. There's no instruction screen in this game, at all. I think it fly faster than the standard ones. And also stronger? But i'm not sure about that one.

 

The boss in this level is Buddha himself. Disclaimer: I do not have any problem or hate with Buddhism and any religion that lead human into self betterment without killing or hurting other human. Here, i am. Just happen to lob dozens bombs at Buddha. But without any resentment, mind you. So the Buddha flies around the stage while holy orbs surround him. But that's not prevent me kicking bombs at him, though. So far, easy boss.

 

Then there's evaluation screen. But there's no specific bonus score for each enemy type defeated. It just counts how many enemies that i defeated, which kind of pointless.

This screen show you that the enemy generators can close on its own. They have limited spawning ability but it's much easier for yourself to just destroy enemy generator than let them exhaust their supply of enemies. Generally, you don't want enemy generated too many. Unless for top score raking, maybe?

Why are you looking at me like that, Sha Wujing?

 

Next level is called Joy World which looks abstract wacky. No joy out of it. Ignore the enemies. I want you to see the background. There roller coaster car with Aladdin's genie painted green, biting on Trojan horse's nose. Then there enemy generator who looks like product from fusion experiment of Aladdin's genie and Frankenstein's monster. It's alive! It's alive and "joy" monsters appear as it open its mouth. Medic_sf13_magic_reac04.wav    

 

If you think "The design is just coincidence to look like Genie" then how about that one on this background? That's clearly taken from the movie or from the video game? I can't remember it accurately, to be honest.

Anyway if you hold down direction on joystick, your bomber will rapidly drop bomb but it's limited to how many bombs you have. You can see the amount of bomb on top left corner besides your life reserve. I think the maximum number of bomb that you have is 9. What's the use of dropping the bombs? You can detonate bunch of them in one spot with your regular kicked bomb. This method is useful to destroy enemy generators with one-go. Sometime they're placed in awkward spot for your bomb throw. It will be more useful if these dropped bombs can be detonated with enemy's contact so i can use them to defeat this pesky rolling small clown. He's hard to defeat with usual method.

Then there's caterpillar with head and body of TV set. I don't want to sound like Angry Video Game Nerd but i want to ask "What drug they're taking when making this game?"

Things get more crazy with tank enemies. Why there's deadly tank with giant beam cannon in amusement park? I have no idea. I forgot to tell you that walls with stripped paint can be destroyed with bomb. You can keep some of them to imprison dangerous enemies. But obviously, enemy's laser can get through the wall.

It seems the developers running out of enthusiasm for this boss fight but their insanity imagination still goes on. I mean. What's this? Floating sentient red sphere accompanied by orbiting smaller orb. If this level supposed to be amusement park theme. They could design sentient Merry-Go-Round or Ferry Wheel.

 

This boss fight is more challenging than i thought. When he change his orbiting orb to vertical configuration, he will open his head and launches brown spheres at me. They're not homing on you but they will track your initial position quite accurately and swiftly.   

 

Next level called stone. But as far as i can see, the enemies are clay. Is that dragon statue made of clay or stone? I'm not statue expert. It could be famous landmark but i'm not sure.

 

I can't argue with Mt. Rushmore. It's definitely stone. So far the enemies are chubby statue and tall statue. The latter has small aggressiveness much like the former but due to its tall height, it can reach higher platform and eventually meet your shin. So watch out for that.

 

Is that a top part of Parthenon? That one is definitely made of stone.

 

You should know by now by now that the deadliest mook have ability to shoot laser beam on each level. Mercifully, for this level the highest tier lesser enemy only have ability to charge forward. It's that samurai clay statue on the bottom of me. He's in the middle of charging forward after he saw me for some milliseconds. Is the motto of Clay samurai "Charge forward blade first without much thinking"?

Things get more hectic when there's more than one Dogū statue with flying cloud that presumably "borrowed" from bunch of Sun Wukong that i destroyed. Thankfully, i get the freeze power up just in time!

 

The boss stage is flying giant clay statue. It seems trivially normal after previous bosses. There's this happy old man. He carries chunk of clay from that pile to clay oven in right corner. However he's on the enemy's side as he burn those clay into the oven and it begins to erupt clay stones all around from the smokestack. It goes without saying that getting hit by those stones are lethal. You can't kill the clay artisan but you can go through him safely. What you can do is destroy the clay oven. Once destroyed, it's ceased to function and rain of clay stones are no more.

Aaww! Look at that sad old geezer. Clay craftsmanship is his only life and without the clay oven, he lose the meaning of life. Clay oven can't be cheap, i reckon.

Anyway, for some reason the boss turn to be flying robot once the clay oven is destroyed. Maybe it provides the boss with clay cover. In this form, the boss becomes more dangerous because of that arm of clay statues that can shoot laser pellets in 8 ways in counter clockwise order. It's harder to dodge them if you get too close to the boss, so don't do that.

 

I like to say that i enjoy the Stone level although most of the content is clay. The boss fight is fun and interesting. Also there's no enemy with capability to shoot beam. I love this level.  

 

Next level is called Music. I don't like music lesson in school so i don't have qualm to destroy this level along with its inhabitants. They're drum (that occasionally beat themselves with stick that they carry around) and Den-Den Daiko. They have the aggressiveness of baby horse which is next to harmless.    

 

But then there's flying violin and trumpet that can shoot cannonball! I don't know why the violin has big kissy lip and pair of wing. Maybe they're the cupid of this world. Horrible! Maybe because of their disjointed limbs, the trumpet makes me think of Rayman.

If you hold up direction on joystick and press kick bomb button, your bomb flies in higher trajectory. This is useful to sneak bombs on enemies on higher ground.  If only Anakin Skywalker has bombs to kick, he can defeat Obi Wan Kenobi on that fateful day.

This level getting worse and worse. There's flying cymbals that can shoot plasma fireball to left and right. I'm about to get hit by it. Engineer_negativevocalization11.wav

The boss is even crazier. This triple tuba with single wheel that move left and right. The side tubas shoot normal cannonball diagonally. The center ones is the most dangerous because it shoot a cannonball that explode into plasma pellets everywhere. They're very hard to dodge but then i remember Jenny's ability to multi jump. Thus i dodge them by flying on corner. You know in Megaman X game where you dodge boss' attack by repeated wall jump. Yup! It has the same feeling with my experience here. 

 

This level probably the worst. It has exponential curve of difficulty. It starts very easy but then BHUM! Lots of enemy with ability to shoot projectiles. I mean this level still winnable if you spam the special bomb but still feel bad. Also i dislike music instruments that have eyes. They're cute? Demoman_no02.wav      

There's only 2 more stages, we almost finish the game so bear with me for little longer. Besides we're about to get into the main attraction of this game: Aladdin level! If you think no way the developer will be so shameless to rip things from Disney's Aladdin. Well, you're quite wrong. Kind of.

 

I'm pretty sure the developers stole asset from Aladdin's game specifically on Sega Genesis version. I like the confused look on Abu after being bombarded. He probably know fireworks but when it comes to cartoon assault bomb. He blow his mind. [Pun may be intended]  

 

There's Aladdin himself and it seems he lose his nose. He become typical anime protagonist, then. I wanted to say that he's ripped from Aladdin's Sega Genesis game because he have sword. But on closer inspection, it more resembles knife from Ghouls 'N Ghosts and it's about to hit me in between my fairy's wings. Wonderful! [Average kitchen knife-sized sarcasm]  

 

There's also the guard and the man inside of pot but they're less deadly than knife-chucking Aladdin.

 

Naturally, there's the genie and he's the boss of this level. Genie has seen better day. He loses some weight but he gain ability to shoot bats while winking his one eye. Does he secretly become Dracula's follower? At least he retain his smile. But maybe it's no longer happy smile like we used to know. Instead, it's evil smirk. He intends to resurrect Lord Dracula here in and the time is nigh. There's no Belmont in (bootleg) Agrabah. 

 

When he's down to small portion of his health, Genie turns into bouncing red sphere with sleepy expression. Hoping to catch you off guard. The reference to Castlevania perhaps not so far.  If you get used to that Konami's vampire slaying platformer game, you hope to gain health if you get the red soul sphere but no. It kills you instead. By the way, your bomber has "1-hit death" health system. So be very careful!

 

That was fun. The Aladdin level is arguably the best. No flying lesser enemy here. There should be Iago but thank God he's nowhere to be found. Hitting Abu and snakes kind of tricky due to their small size but manageable.

I have killed 18 Abu(s), 17 Aladdin(s) and Genie. I hope Disney doesn't file a lawsuit against me for killing their famous characters, in future. Let's pray they never discover my site here.

 

Next level is Goblin which supposed to be horror theme. So the experience doesn't go downhill after the Aladdin level, after all. Hey, i know these goblins! They're edited from protagonist of Prehistorik 2. I know in the sequel Prehistorik Man in either SNES and GBA, he has given name Sam. But before then he's nameless, i think.

 

In this level, there's giant bat. Not going to lie, they look cute instead of scary. :3

 

However this flying lady is downright scary. Perhaps the blood on her mouth that makes her creepy and unsettling. Instead using lipstick like normal ladies, she use her prey's blood to apply coloration to her lips. Demoman_jeers08.wav

 

She attacks you by turning into ghost fireball and then moving fast to places. Perhaps this simple attack method is to save the developer to draw more complex sprite but we're saved from possibility of scarier or twisted image of her attacking you.  

 

The bat can attack you by dropping themselves from great height and later stunned momentarily. Look at how cute they're when falling hard and miss me. :D

 

The boss is goblin but with wings for arm. How he can dress himself without normal hand? Maybe other smaller goblin do that for him. He's the boss after all. Much like genie he can either fly at you swiftly or shoot bats. However his bat projectiles can be destroyed with your bomb. So it's quite easier than fighting Genie.

 

But he have another attack! He split into 4 and shoot laser from above. This laser pattern is fixed but the attack execution is fast! You can't see him or his copies due to flickering effect. There's lots of flickering effect here and there.

 

Overall, this level is pretty fun. Horror theme in this kind of zany looking game is always welcome to me. I admit the creativity of the developer on making these small goblins which are modification from Prehistorik 2's protagonist. The giant female goblin (or ghost?) is top notch. Fortunately there's no lesser enemy that have ranged attack, which is nice!

 

I hope you don't expect Final boss or anything like that because there's none.  The game ends when you finish all the level, that's it. There's no final closure in this game except this congratulation screen along with credit roll of enemies that you defeated.

Watch out, Genie! Aladdin is about to stab your back to vent his anger for losing. He's big sore loser.

 

I suppose i can show you some demonstration of other character. As i have said before. Toto is only slightly faster than other character. But his special bomb have horizontal and vertical reach although fairly short. I think this is the second strongest special bomb.

You probably notice that Toto's special bomb is taken straightly from Bomberman. Not only that but also those bomb icons also taken from Bomberman. Very creative, Yunsung Elec©.

 

As for Mola, his special bomb is he creates skull explosion because there's nothing cold than south pole than death itself. It's the strongest bomb and can destroy enemy generator in few seconds. Although it has small range. His ability is skating which is activated by wiggling the joystick twice in same direction. It's supposed to allow him dodge enemy's attack fast but with inability to stop in the middle of his skating he's bound to get hit by other enemy. Think of it like sliding in Metal Slug 5 and you get the idea on how bad the skating ability is. It's like you become either sitting duck or dashing duck that can't stop until hit wall or other enemy.

 

There's no story within this game so i make one up. Bomb kick is deadly reality show much like Smash TV but with bomb as contestant's weapon instead of gun. So all these enemies are fake. They're just machine, robot, animatronics doll, etc. Well, except that old man in Stone level's boss fight. He's pensioner who's brought to the game and he's happen to love clay craftsmanship. Toto is here for fame and glory. "I'm soccer player, i can kick anything. This is easy" he said. Mola is separated from his circus group and he's involuntarily brought to this show. His only goal is to survive and later reunite with his circus friends. As for Jenny, she's in for fruits item that occasionally appear when destroying enemies. Hunger get the best of her.

 

Yunsung Elec©'s Bomb Kick (1998) is rough arcade game but it comes natural with every other bootleg game. The gameplay is simple. You kick bombs at enemies and enemy generators. Very simple! However the main problem of this game is: everything other than tier 1 and 2 lesser enemies, take so many damage before destroyed. I suspect it's not real bomb. It's plastic ball filled with 2 firecrackers at most. Thus explaining why the bomb is so weak and also kickable. The method of dropping bomb could be more useful if the bombs explode when enemies touch them. The higher angle bomb kick is useful to attack target on higher plane or too close for standard bomb kick. I think the game needs more powerful power up like speed up, projectile attack, or screen-clearing bomb. How irony is it for the game called "Bomb Kick" not to have screen-clearing bomb, huh? For the game of its kind, it's lack of score up item but that's just minor issue. The game consists of 6 level with 8 sub-level and a boss level. When you use continue, you restart at the beginning of level you died instead of continue in condition where you left off. That continue system makes the game even more slogging. The presentation is mess but not bad. The music feels lazy and not engaging. There's one that's definitely 5-seconds loop of Super Mario Brothers ost but in played in 0.5 speed. The music is played not in particular stage. It's changed when you use continue in the same stage. It's kind of unusual. The sound effect is generic and bland.       

 

Bomb Kick (1998) is quite bad game but not horrible and you can have fun from it. Especially in Aladdin, Stone, and Goblin level. While the other level feels unfun. The Buddha level feel kind of problematic. The music level is terrible and i hate it. I mean i like listening to Classic music sometime but don't convince me to like sentient music instruments that have eyeball. You just can't!