''Raid on Bungeling Bay'' (バンゲリングベイ lit.: Bungeling Bay) is a

shoot 'em up Shoot 'em ups (also known as shmups or STGs) are a Video game genre, subgenre of action games. There is no consensus as to which design elements compose a shoot 'em up; some restrict the definition to games featuring spacecraft and certain typ ...

for the

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in ...

published by

Broderbund Broderbund Software, Inc. (stylized as Brøderbund) was an American maker of video games, educational software, and productivity tools. Broderbund is best known for the 8-bit video game hits '' Choplifter'', '' Lode Runner'', '' Karateka'', and ...

in 1984 and by

Ariolasoft Ariolasoft GmbH, later known as United Software, was a German video game developer, publisher and distributor. It started in 1983 as the software subsidiary of Ariola Records, itself the record division of Germany's large Bertelsmann empire. ...

in the UK in 1985. It was the first video game developed by Will Wright and inspired him to create the 1989 game ''

SimCity ''SimCity'' is an open-ended city-building video game franchise originally designed by Will Wright. The first game in the series, '' SimCity'', was published by Maxis in 1989 and was followed by several sequels and many other spin-off ''S ...

''.

Gameplay

''Raid on Bungeling Bay'' is a 2D

. The player controls a

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which Lift (force), lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning Helicopter rotor, rotors. This allows the helicopter to VTOL, take off and land vertically, to hover (helicopter), hover, and ...

launched from an

aircraft carrier An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and hangar facilities for supporting, arming, deploying and recovering carrier-based aircraft, shipborne aircraft. Typically it is the ...

to bomb six

factories A factory, manufacturing plant or production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. Th ...

scattered across islands on a small planetoid occupied by the Bungeling Empire (frequent villains in Broderbund games), while fending off escalating counterattacks by

gun turret A gun turret (or simply turret) is a mounting platform from which weapons can be fired that affords protection, visibility and ability to turn and aim. A modern gun turret is generally a rotatable weapon mount that houses the crew or mechanis ...

s, fighter jets,

guided missile A missile is an airborne ranged weapon capable of Propulsion, self-propelled flight aided usually by a propellant, jet engine or rocket motor. Historically, 'missile' referred to any projectile that is thrown, shot or propelled towards a targ ...

s, and a

battleship A battleship is a large, heavily naval armour, armored warship with a main battery consisting of large naval gun, guns, designed to serve as a capital ship. From their advent in the late 1880s, battleships were among the largest and most form ...

. There is also a hidden island for the player to reload on. Failure means that the Bungeling Empire develops a war machine to take over the planet

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

. Players have to attack its

infrastructure Infrastructure is the set of facilities and systems that serve a country, city, or other area, and encompasses the services and facilities necessary for its economy, households and firms to function. Infrastructure is composed of public and pri ...

while defending the

which serves as home base. Over time, the factories grow and develop new technologies to use against the player. There are visible signs of interdependence among the islands, such as supply boats moving between them. In order to win the game, the player must prevent the escalation by bombing all the factories as quickly as possible, keeping them from advancing their technology. If left alone for too long, the factories create enough new weaponry to overwhelm the player.

Ports

''Raid on Bungeling Bay'' was ported to the Famicom/NES by

Hudson Soft was a Japanese video game company known for releasing numerous titles across video game consoles, home computers, and mobile phones. Headquartered in the Midtown Tower in Tokyo, it also maintained an office in the Hudson Building in Sapporo. F ...

, who published this version and released it in Japan on February 22, 1985. A conversion for the arcade-based VS. System was created based on this port, and it was distributed to arcades in Japan by Nintendo. Although a United States release was planned for the Summer of 1985, Will Wright stated in an interview that he was not sure if it actually did get released. An

MSX MSX is a standardized home computer architecture, announced by ASCII Corporation on June 16, 1983. It was initially conceived by Microsoft as a product for the Eastern sector, and jointly marketed by Kazuhiko Nishi, the director at ASCII Corpo ...

version was developed by Zap and published by Sony. The Japanese releases of the game are alternatively titled .

Reception

''Raid on Bungeling Bay'' for the

sold about 20,000 to 30,000 units in America, while the NES version sold about a million units in Japan. Will Wright attributed this large discrepancy to the lack of

software piracy Online piracy or software piracy is the practice of downloading and distributing copyrighted works digitally without permission, such as music, movies or software. History Nathan Fisk traces the origins of modern online piracy back to similar ...

on the NES due to its cartridge system, along with ''Raid'' being one of the first American games published in Japan. Sales of the game gave Wright the financial freedom to create SimCity. Stating that ''Raid'' "blows '' Choplifter'' away!", ''

Creative Computing ''Creative Computing'' was one of the earliest magazines covering the microcomputer revolution. Published from October 1974 until December 1985, the magazine covered the spectrum of hobbyist/home/personal computing in a more accessible format t ...

'' in 1984 said that the game "push sthe animation capabilities of the Commodore 64 to their very limits". The magazine concluded that it would become "one of the all-time great computer games". ''

Compute! ''Compute!'' (), often stylized as ''COMPUTE!'', is an American home computer magazine that was published from 1979 to 1994. Its origins can be traced to 1978 in Len Lindsay's ''PET Gazette'', one of the first magazines for the Commodore PET. ...

'' wrote in 1985 that ''Raid'' "possesses all the virtues needed to appease the demanding gamer", with "amazingly detailed" graphics. ''

Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American Video game journalism, computer game magazine that was published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 199 ...

'' in 1988 approved of the Nintendo version's graphics, calling it a "high adventure with realistic overtones" that did not involve dragons or elves. The magazine named it the Action-Strategy Game of the Year for Nintendo, writing that ''Raid'' had been "rescued from

's computer software vaults, updated slightly, and sent out to challenge all the bright new intendo games andblew them out of the water ... a delightful game experience". In 1996, ''Computer Gaming World'' declared ''Raid on Bungeling Bay'' the 24th-best computer game ever released.

Legacy

Wright continued to develop the editor for the game as a personal toy because he enjoyed it so much. He researched

urban planning Urban planning (also called city planning in some contexts) is the process of developing and designing land use and the built environment, including air, water, and the infrastructure passing into and out of urban areas, such as transportatio ...

and realised that others might enjoy constructing and building cities themselves. The result, initially named City Planner, was a more advanced

simulation A simulation is an imitative representation of a process or system that could exist in the real world. In this broad sense, simulation can often be used interchangeably with model. Sometimes a clear distinction between the two terms is made, in ...

that eventually became ''SimCity''.

References

External links

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Review
in GAMES Magazine {{Sim series, simcity=yes 1984 video games Broderbund games Commodore 64 games Helicopter video games Hudson Soft games MSX games Multiplayer and single-player video games Nintendo Entertainment System games Nintendo games Nintendo VS. System games Shoot 'em ups Video games developed in the United States Video games set on fictional islands ZAP Corporation games Ariolasoft games