Balloon Kid - Development and Reception

Development and Reception

Balloon Kid was designed by Gunpei Yokoi, Yoshio Sakamoto and Hitoshi Yamagami, and developed by Nintendo in co-operation with the external company Pax Softnica. It was first published in in North America in February, and finally in Europe on September 28. As such, it is one of the few first-party Nintendo games that were not published in Japan, until Nintendo licensed it to Sanrio's subsidiary Character Soft for reprogramming and publishing it to the Family Computer as Hello Kitty World exclusively in Japan on March 27, 1992, while Balloon Kid was remade for Game Boy Color and released exclusively in Japan on July 31, 2000. According to Hitoshi Yamagami, director of Balloon Fight GB, the Game Boy Color version was developed due to demand for a Balloon Fight sequel and that the success of Game Boy Gallery "made them consider making an updated version of Balloon Kid for the Japanese market." Both Balloon Kid and Balloon Fight GB were later re-released in their original regions as part of the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console lineup; however, the VS Mode" became incompatible.

IGN editor Lucas M. Thomas called the game "a solid little adventure game" that stood out to him because of its improvements over the gameplay of the original Balloon Trip mode of Balloon Fight. Although he found it to be "not mind-blowing, but it is fun and adds a bit of tension to things.", he thought that Balloon Kid is "a nice little lost sequel from yesteryear that is pleasant to play through again for just three bucks." Mean Machines rated the game 51%, describing it as "full of promise", then adding that the repetitive gameplay and low difficulty caused the game to become boring. They added that while the premise was interesting, they couldn't "help thinking that this is a mediocre game". Author Jeff Rovin in the book How to Win at Game Boy Games noted the gameplay as "novel" if repetitive after the second stage of the game, adding that regardless the game was entertaining for all ages, and "a worthy addition to the Game Boy library", grading the game B. The 3DS Virtual Console re-release of Balloon Kid was scored a 4/10 in a NintendoLife review.