Bonk's Adventure (TurboGrafx-16)

Bonk's Adventure
Also known as: PC-Genjin: Pithecanthropus Computerurus (JP) Developers: Hudson Soft, Atlus, Red Company Publishers: Hudson Soft (JP), NEC Home Electronics (US) Platform: TurboGrafx-16 Released in JP: December 15, 1989 Released in US: 1990 This game has debugging material. This game has a hidden level select. This game has a notes page

To do: Are there any regional differences aside from the title/text changes?

Bonk's Adventure was the first game starring the wacky (sometimes cyborg) caveman with a big head. Its success kicked off a long series of games and led to Bonk becoming the mascot for the TurboGrafx-16, with this game becoming the second pack-in title for the system alongside Keith Courage in Alpha Zones, even receiving ports to the Amiga and NES as well.

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Notes

Debug Menu

To do: Add cheats for Mednafen.

To access the debug menu, enter the following codes in Magic Engine at the title screen and press Run to begin a new game:

000A49:32
000A4A:125
000A4B:237
000CE1:12

The first three codes set hex values 207DED at offset $000A49, a JSR $ED7D which causes the game to jump into the debug menu as it's setting its hardcoded jump height and speed values when starting a new game. Specifically, it replaces 8DB72D, a STA $2DB7 operation for the speed value.

Once at $000D7D, the game goes to a few other subroutines, and then to the main debug code at $0172A0. Currently, there's no known way to reach $000D7D normally (such as through a button cheat). It's located right after the code for finishing a round. It could use some more investigation to confirm if there's no way to access it without cheat codes/hex editing.

The final code isn't required to enable the debug menu, but is a handy fix to prevent the game from resetting jump height and speed to the defaults after clearing a round. It replaces $03 with $0C at $000CE1, causing it to branch over the reset.

Regional Differences

Title Screen

Japan	US

Bonk is known as PC-Genjin in Japan (with the PC standing for Pithecanthropus Computerus, as the title screen helpfully illustrates), a clever play on genjin, the Japanese word for caveman, and the PC Engine. NEC went with a more straightforward name for him overseas.