Challenge, adventure, and sky-high excitement!
Originally released in 1990 for the Game Boy, Balloon Kid is a sequel to the NES classic Balloon Fight. The player controls a girl named Alice whose goal is to rescue her little brother, who floated away after attaching too many balloons to himself.
With two balloons of her own to represent her Hit Points, Alice floats through several stages that scroll from right to left, collecting balloons and avoiding spikes, birds and other enemies.
There also exist a Family Computer port called Hello Kitty World that replaces all the sprites with those of Sanrio's characters.
This game provides examples of:
- American Kirby Is Hardcore: A minor example (and an inversion considering the release order)- the American box art gives Alice a spunky look with Girlish Pigtails and sneakers, while the Japanese art depicts her as a baby with a cuter appearance (which seems to match the sprite more closely).
- Auto-Scrolling Level: All of them, except the bonus levels. Justified, since Alice is chasing her brother's balloon trail, at least the reason for it moving.
- Balloonacy: This trope going wrong is pretty much the entire game's plot.
- Balloon-Bursting Bird: Birds could pop Alice's balloons.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: Prominent in the second and seventh levels.
- Bee Afraid: These are particularly prominent
- Wall Crawl: The caterpillars and the beetles
- Bittersweet Ending: A light comical example. After overcoming all sorts of deadly hazards, Alice is finally reunited with her brother. Together they fly back home as the credits roll and the beautiful ending theme plays... and then a sneaky enemy bumps into Alice, which makes her drop Jim into the sea!
- Bizarrchitecture: The first level has Pencil shaped skyscrapers in the background.
- Child Eater: Alice is depicted as a small child or even a baby, and if she flies too close to the water a fish will jump up and drag her down into the water, eating her alive.
- The Dead Have Eyes: The flying fish skeletons in the whale have eyes.
- Death Throws: Enemies hit while invincible, as well as some (presumably)inanimate hazards.
- Distressed Dude: Jim since he inflated one too many balloons and a strong gust of wind blows him away, This causes his sister Alice to go on a quest through 8 stages to save him before he is blown out of her reach and he is lost forever.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Birds, bats, crabs, campfires, walking flames, bears, alligators, penguins, crabs, walruses, and more. They want Alice dead for some reason.
- Eternal Engine: The eighth and final stage takes place in a factory.
- Excuse Plot: Your little brother was carried aloft by balloons! Go save him!
- Fire Balls: Some of them walk and jump even jump.
- Floating Platforms: It even has floating buildings!
- Flying Seafood Special: Fish skeletons in the whale and later penguins.
- For the Evulz: None of the enemies seem to like Alice floating around and want to get rid of her.
- Goomba Stomp: Useful in boss encounters and against other balloon users.
- Inconveniently-Placed Conveyor Belt: In the factory.
- Invincibility Power-Up: P Balloons make Alice invincible for a short time and let her knock enemies and hazards off the screen by touching them. Doesn't stop rain clouds from dropping her altitude however.
- Jump Physics: Alice notably jumps pretty high, higher without balloons.
- Kid Hero: Alice. If one goes by the Japanese depiction, she is also a Fearless Infant.
- The Lost Woods: The second level takes place inside a forest.
- Mini-Game: Every so often, Alice can enter one, where balloons rise from four pipes. The entrance to them is represented by giant game boys.
- Never Smile at a Crocodile: One of the enemies announced by an audio cue.
- Nostalgia Level: Alice can play the endless balloon trip from the first game if the player wants too, music, electricity and all.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: You can get your balloons popped twice before falling, but Alice suffers an instant death blow if certain enemies or obstacles strike her directly. Downplayed for the balloons as Alice can always pump up new ones by repeatedly pressing down as long as she's standing on the ground.
- Palmtree Panic: The third stage takes place on a beach. Just watch out for the crabs.
- Pinball Projectile: The sparks shot off by the clouds and those released from the robot boss's mouth.
- Premiseville: Alice's hometown of Pencilvania, which has pencil-shaped skyscrapers.
- Press X to Die: Pressing B in midair releases your balloons. If done wrong, you'll crash into the water.
- Real Men Wear Pink: Samm wears Pink in the Game Boy Color port.
- Ribcage Stomach: The fourth stage takes place inside a whale.
- The Rival: Alice's is Samm, whom player two controls in VS Mode.
- Scoring Points: Same as balloon fight for the most part.
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The sixth level takes place on a frozen island, full of water, ice and evil walruses.
- Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom: All over the place the factory.
- Snowlems: One attacks by throwing its pale for a hat like a boomerang.
- Spikes of Doom: Touching these instantly defeats Alice, regardless of health.
- Stalactite Spite: There are enough examples of seemingly inanimate objects that only fall when Alice is under them (Some kind of nut it seems, bones inside a living creature, icicles, giant snowflakes and finally regular stalactites...and rocks)
- Super Drowning Skills: Falling into the water costs you a life. If a fish (or frog) catches you, it drags you into the water, also costing you a life.
- Time Stands Still: Bubbles sometimes rise from the water in Balloon Trip and popping one has this affect on everything but Alice, including the fish that try to eat her, for a short while.
- Tin-Can Robot: The final boss.
- Underground Level: The seventh level.
- Video Game Flight: Same as balloon fight, except sometimes it is beneficial to temporarily turn it off.
- When All Else Fails, Go Right: A notable aversion for a 2D platformer as all its levels start from the right and end at the left, as a Call-Back to the original Balloon Fight's Balloon Trip mode.
- Womb Level: The fourth level where you go inside a whale, doubles with Ribcage Stomach.
- X-Ray Sparks: When Alice gets hit by lightning sparks.
