Hello everyone and welcome to the latest installment of the Weekly Contests!  The sky’s the limit with this week’s game, so coming soaring through the air with your host, Balloon Man Bimmy.  It’s time to soar through the atmosphere in our balloons and behold many marvelous sights as a gentle breeze carries us forth.  But what’s this on the horizon?  A bunch of air pirates with their own balloons that are looking to disrupt our little adventure.  Balloon Man Bimmy, you say, whatever are we gonna do?  We’re gonna teach those pirates a lesson, that’s what.  Let’s burst their balloons and send them crashing back to Earth!!  Just make sure you don’t let them re-inflate their balloons or their going to be stronger than you ever imagined!  And also watch out for killer lightning bolts and giant fish dudes who populate the seas.  Stray too close to the water and you’re bound to be their next meal!  Here’s what you need to know to stop the dastardly air pirates:
 

• Play on Mode A
• 1 Player only
• Play until you lose your last life
• Pause the game as soon as you lose your last life to get your score
• Highest score wins
• GENRE: ARCADE

The contest ends Sunday, 6/8/14 at 11 PM NA time.  Your user name MUST be in the picture for your score to be valid.  The entire TV screen, or computer monitor if you are playing on an emulator, MUST be in the picture for the score to be valid.  No partial screenshots will be considered or accepted.  No screenshots by hitting "print screen" on a computer will be allowed.  You must take a picture of your computer monitor.  There may be instances where this will be acceptable, but it will be at the discretion of myself and the contest organizers.  Also, the use of turbo controllers is forbidden, as well as any cheat codes, Game Genies, or save states if playing on an emulator.  Also, we will only be using NTSC systems for the contests.  The use of PAL systems will NOT be allowed.  Good luck everyone and have fun

Also, if everyone thinks we should put in a no point racking rule, please discuss it here.

Point racking should be allowed. I was testing it out earlier and after a short while a cloud will spit out a spark,followed by another one,then replaced by progressively faster sparks. Whether 1 balloon or two,you touch the spark and you are minus one life. Plus the designed flighty control mechanics (Which I've never liked.) makes things even tougher. And to my knowledge,you aren't able to earn any extra lives,so I don't see why there is any reason why we can't point rack.

Score update.

Balloon fight?! YAAAAAAAAAAY! One of my favorite games on the system. Also, it's really fun to play with a friend. However, there should be a balloon trip part in the contest (that counts like a bonus)

You have the character that's in your avatar next to your name? My Bulbasaur is going to sue you for copyright infringement
Just kidding, that perler gutsman is awesome.

355'000 Points!

I simply love this game. This is not my last score, so be prepared!

Hey Guts (or anyone else who can help me), if you don't mind, what emulator did you use and where did you download the ROM from?  I haven't been able to find a ROM of Balloon Fight that works with my usual emulator (VirtuaNES) yet, so I'm hoping to find a compatible combination.  I dont' wish to skip this week if I can help it.  Thanks.

2,121,550

Does anyone know if its possible to roll the score over in this game?

That's an important question for sure.

Try JNes, I've used it in the past and it works fine for me.

Damn! I missed a balloon in one of the bonus games and if I didn't miss it, I would probably have gotten over 700K.
Oh well, still a nice score. 668850

Haha well I was gonna post a score this morning but it is not ready for prime time yet. The bar has been set!

Wow, this game is no joke.

So do the sparks ever go away? Or do they keep building up on a level?

I get the idea that we should be popping each guy's balloon until they build up to a yellow balloon, but point-pressing against a yellow guy with sparks flying around seems crazy.

If they fall in the water, they go away, but after a while, their speed gets brutal

Yeah, after posting this, I noticed that.

Also noticed that the bonus rounds get increasingly lucrative, so level progression seems to be more valuable than grinding on a specific level, in general.

Once I got the hang of it, I jumped from struggling to break 100k to clearing 300k by the time I had looped the level-layouts.

Makes the higher scores seem a bit more attainable than I first thought.

At first, try point racking a bit (so your score is around 50K before the first bonus round) and continue doing this until the 2nd bonus round (your score should be around 100K by now). Then start focusing more on progression because the bonus stages are going to be your main source of points (even though they stop at 30K for the super bonus). Don't even bother trying point racking in the later stages because the lightining comes up very early AND is very brutal.

Thanks Caleb, I appreciated that.  JNes works fine.

If the score rolls over, take a picture right before you roll the score and then right after the score rolls. Do this for each roll of the score. This is what we have typically done in the past with games in which the score rolls over and it has worked out very well.

Ok thanks. Not sure if I can even get a score that high but just in case its good to know. 

I would advice players that roll the score to take a picture of their newly fresh rolled score with the number of the phase visible.

If you roll the score, make sure to pause the game in the beginning of the next phase in order to show the number of the phase you're in.

Monster scores so far. I knew my score wasn't great,but after seeing these it's flat out terrible.

Man, I agree.  (But not that your score is terrible!)  I was all set to put up a score this morning and now I'm scared off until I improve.    With a little more practice I am sure your score will improve nicely.  Hopefully mine too!

Well, I couldn't live up to my username, but I was able to roll the score at least.

Score: 1,023,600

Phase 42


Bonus Round where the score was rolled


Phase 43



I ran into some major respawn shenanigans with this game.  Immediate death one time, and 1 popped balloon on several other occasions due to the lack of any sort of respawning invulnerability.