No, I don’t know what a “Bonze” is. Hold on, I’ll look it up. Oh, it’s a Buddhist monk. Everything makes sense now. 

I thought it was a weird localization name, but it makes sense because Bonze Adventure stars a Buddhist monk. Strange localizations make sense for Taito, makers of Violence Fight. In fact, it constantly refers to the main antagonist Enma as “Emma.” But, anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.

IT’S SO BONZE!

Bonze Adventure is a 1988 arcade game by Taito. It was originally released in Japan under the name Jigoku Meguri, which translates to something like “Hell Tour.” Appropriately, it involves said Buddhist monk descending into the underworld to knock some sense into Enma. The first stage is a pretty great-looking underworld, and then it’s just hellish backdrops for the rest. I feel like I’ve seen Yomi way too many times in games from the era.

Fortunately, Bonze Adventure at least looks good. Junji Yarita is credited under creature design. He worked on Darius and Typhoon Gal before this. If I had to guess – and this is pure speculation – he was probably behind the art in Ben Bero Beh that I loved so much. There’s a lot more detail than you’d maybe expect, especially in the protagonist’s death animations. The expressiveness in Bonze Adventure, Typhoon Gal, and Ben Bero Beh is all very impressive, but that’s all I have to go on to guess who was behind it.

But it’s all hell. Fiery pits, ice, rock, sperm; the whole nine (levels of hell). Actually, there are seven. I’m pretty sure the only reason I’m down on the whole “entire game in hell” thing is because I’ve seen it so much. Getsu Fūma Den and Yōkai Dōchūki come to mind. Also, it’s bland scenery. Especially when they stick up the sperm wallpaper.

NICE WALLPAPER

So, you play as a diminutive little monk. He is called Bonze Kackremboh in the English version, and I refuse to believe that is the name is was given in Japan; it’s too ridiculous. He shoots bubbles for some reason. Wait. I think they’re actually prayer beads, but you can power them up to be massive, so they just look like inflated bubbles to me. They come in four colours: red, blue, purple, and green. They each have their own flavour: fire, water, electricity, and green, respectively. What the difference is, I’d have trouble telling you. They each have special attacks, but I’m not even really clear on how to use them. You can get pretty far just by throwing your big balls around and not worrying about it.

Okay, maybe don’t take advice from me because I struggled through the back half of Bonze Adventure. Whenever you die, you basically start over about five paces back from the place you died, essentially just ensuring that you merely have to get through the part that killed you successfully before. Well, that is if you can’t just take advantage of the post-death invincibility blink.

I started dying a lot halfway through, and that’s because every so often, Bonze Adventure decides to be a grumpy piece of shit. You’ll find segments that are simple in appearance, but they’ve placed enemies in specific spots that make it extremely difficult to navigate around. That might sound obvious, but the deceptive appearance masking a cruel trick can get pretty annoying fast.

NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH BONK’S ADVENTURE

This also employs a technique I’ve observed in some arcade games where all the early level will be extremely easy before the difficulty abruptly skyrockets. I’m not sure if it’s intentional, but it’s rather insidious. Once you pass a certain point in the game, you’ll feel locked in. You’ve made enough progress that you feel the ending is within reach. You don’t want to repeat what you’ve already done, so you keep pushing toward the end. You just want to claim victory and cross it off your list, never looking back. 

So, Bonze Adventure – whether intentionally or not – takes advantage of the sunk cost fallacy. It starts stacking the odds against you, but you just keep pumping quarters in because you’ve already come this far. On a console port, you can just keep continuing, with the only punishment being a reclining Buddha telling you what a disappointing failure you are. In an arcade, you might spend all the money you had earmarked to buy nachos and still never see the ending.

The ending, by the way, just hammers this home. I’m not sure how much to spoil, but the last boss has a second phase that completely changes the game entirely. It’s also entirely unfair and requires you to either discover a way to exploit the boss’s behaviour or just hope for random luck to come your way. Or perhaps a combination of both, as it was in my case.

BELOW THE SEWERS

I started hurling curse words at my screen. That’s not uncommon, but it’s also never a good sign. However, it does distract from the fact that Bonze Adventure is just kind of a boring game. Its level design is bland, and its bosses are rare, predictable, and sometimes infuriating.

The only thing it really has going for it is its art style, which ends up being trapped in caves. There’s a solid variety of enemies throughout the game, but that only gets it so far against a repetitive backdrop of humdrum floating platforms and bottomless (or lava-filled) pits. Junji Yarita seems to have done a lot of heavy lifting here.

There are better games to beat your head against. Like, for example, the Ghosts N’ Goblins/Makaimura series. They are so incredibly frustrating, but at least they have interesting challenges. The only thing it doesn’t have is balls.

5/10

This review was conducted on the Arcade Archives port for the Nintendo Switch. It was paid for by the author.