The Bonus Stage (or "Bonus Level"... or "Bonus Round") has been a mainstay of video games for darn near as long as most of us can remember.
From the car smashing stage of Street Fighter 2 to the totally tubular half-pipe stage of Sonic the Hedgehog 2... bonus levels can, quite often, be a huge amount of fun in their own right -- occasionally even being more memorable than the regular stages of the game itself.
But, here's a question: What was the first Bonus Stage in a video game?
I mean the very first one?
Well, according to many historical accounts... that honor would go to Namco's Rally-X. Heck, even the Wikipedia entry for "Bonus Stage" lists Rally-X, alone, as "one of the first to feature a bonus stage".
That screenshot, right there, is Rally-X. The first version, developed by Namco, and released in October of 1980. In it, the Bonus Level is referred to as a "Challenging Stage". Well. Kinda.
Note the spelling error: "Charanging Stage", with an R, instead of "Challenging Stage".
This translation mistake was fixed in a Midway release of the game a few months later. Just the same... it makes me giggle.
But... hold up for one second... "One of the first"? Wikipedia says this is "one of the first"?
Pretty non-specific language there. In fact, it's so non-specific... that it's an almost pointless fact. Was it the actual first? Second? Seventh?! Nonetheless... you'll find references to Rally-X being "one of the first games with a Bonus Stage" all over the Intertubes.
Because this is The Lunduke Journal, let's set the record straight with some cold, hard facts:
- Rally-X was not the first video game with a Bonus Stage.
- It was the second.
The 1st video game with a Bonus Stage: Carnival
In June of 1980 -- just 4 months before the release of Namco's Rally-X -- the world got the very first video game to ever have a dedicated "Bonus Level": Sega / Gremlin's Carnival.
Note: Gremlin was an arcade game developer in San Diego, California -- which was purchased by SEGA in the late 1970s. Which means the "Video Game Bonus Stage" was invented in San Diego.
Carnival was a pretty simple game. It was, in essence, a video game version of a shooting gallery... just like you'd find, you know, at a carnival. You shoot little animals and earn points. Very straightforward.
If the player managed to shoot every animal on the screen -- including the ducks, which could be a real pain in the rear as they would pop back up if you don't clear the level fast enough -- you were immediately taken to the bonus stage.
What did that bonus stage look like? Behold!
For the bonus round, you shoot a bear.
Every time you shoot the bear, you get extra points. And, each time you hit the bear, it changes directions and goes the other way -- back and forth, left and right -- speeding up a little bit on each turn.
Eventually that crazy bear is so amped -- clearly on some sort of crazy, illegal stimulant -- up that it just shoots off the screen.
Once it leaves the screen... the bonus level is done... and you move on to the next regular level of the game.
Initially you only have one bear in the bonus stage... but, as the game progresses, multiple bear targets start appearing. Eventually maxing out at 4 bears.
So. There you have it.
Definitively, the first two video games to have a Bonus Stage are (in order):
- Carnival (SEGA/Gremlin) - June, 1980
- Rally-X (Namco) - October, 1980
The next time you see someone talking, vaguely, about the origin of the "Bonus Stage" -- or trying to pass off Rally-X as the first -- you send them here.
Let The Lunduke Journal set them straight.
