Every now and then, a concept so simple can be a pretty stimulating game with a lot of replay value. Nintendo perhaps seemed inspired by the arcade classic Joust, which precedes Williams Electronics' game by two years, and put their own spin on the action platformer. Whenever I talk about Super Smash Bros.' legitimacy as a fighting game, I generally compare elements of its philosophy being borrowed from games like Balloon Fight.

Developed and published by Nintendo in 1982, Balloon Fight was released in arcades in 1984 in the United States and Japan, making its way to the Famicom/NES a year later, along with ports on many Japanese home computers like the Sharp X1 and NEC PC-8801. Yoshio Sakamoto, one of Nintendo's most renown programmers (Metroid Dread, WarioWare, Kid Icarus), headed production. 

As mentioned above, the gameplay is very similar to Joust, each stage has to be cleared of enemies known as Balloon Birds before proceeding. The player has two balloons atop their helmets, and any touch above the head results in one being popped. If both of them are destroyed, that's one life down. Your key means of movement is propelling yourself by tapping the B or A buttons, which lifts you off the ground, and left and right on the D-pad guides you in the respective direction. Enemies just need to be hit once, but they are capable of swarming you or catching you at the wrong angle. Other common hazards include rotating bumpers that can deflect you wildly around, lightning-shooting storm clouds, and if you or even an enemy drifts too low towards a body of water, a giant fish (that looks vaguely like Muddy the Mudskipper from Ren & Stimpy to me).

There really isn't a whole lot to say about the game, it's incredibly straightforward, but very enjoyable and satisfying. It features two player co-op, but both players can also compete for higher score or try and take one-another out. There is friendly fire, so if you're working together to complete it, some communication beforehand may be handy. With the correct placement, bumping into each other may help out on occasion. The console version does include an extra mode called Balloon Trip, where the objective is to clear obstacle-covered courses. This, in essence, feels like the first Survival Mode style feature in a console game. Feel free to correct me on that. 

The graphics are good, the color schemes of stages after completing roughly four or five and finishing a bonus stage. Like many Nintendo arcades around the era, there isn't a whole lot to look at when it comes to environment, the background is a starry night sky for the entirety of the game, as the sprites fly across the horizon. It's primitive, but it's not bad. The NES has only been launched for about a year, so the many games early into its life sported a minimalist look that certainly has a charm. 

The controls, Balloon Fight's physics took a little bit of getting used to. In Joust, your hit-box is right in front of you, and in Balloon Fight, everything below your waist (and the Balloon Birds) is below the waist. The faster you tap the buttons, the higher and faster you go, even if that's not the most optimal decision at times. It can be a little challenging to thread needles in obstacles, but it gets quite fun to get very good at it.

As one of the black box NES releases, Balloon Fight was released at a time when home consoles now had the tech to expand the possibilities of what video games were capable of. Like Sega, Nintendo's game design ports well to the NES, and Balloon Fight borrows a lot from its arcade counterpart. Now that online co-op play and leaderboards are on the Nintendo Switch Online version of the game, so it's a cool version on Balloon Fight to experience.