Inside The Cancelled Bonk Game: How Hudson’s Ice Age Froze A Cult Mascot’s 3D Debut

Bonk’s fortunes, however, would not be tied to the PC Engine. While the console was a hit in its home country—considered the main competitor to the Super Famicom—the Turbografx floundered in North America. Despite two console-exclusive sequels, Bonk would soon make the leap to a variety of platforms, from the Game Boy to the Amiga to (eventually) his original competitor, the Famicom. These began as ports of the original game, but soon became entirely different things—the Game Boy versions, in particular, are unique games.

Bonk’s Adventure, TurboGrafx-16

Finally, Bonk would jump ship to Nintendo entirely with 1994’s Super Bonk. The imaginative title made use of Bonk 3’s time traveling mechanics, and boasted visuals that stood head-to-toe with some of the best the venerated console had to offer. But in a crowded marketplace, Bonk’s humble stature and simple pitch didn’t stand out from the competition. No longer a platform mascot, he was simply… a little cave boy with a fun platformer. Nothing more, nothing less. No tie-in cartoon, no action figures, and nary a pajama set in sight. In the cutthroat market of the mid ‘90s, that wasn’t enough to hang with the likes of Sonic or Crash Bandicoot.

Further complicating things was the fact that Bonk’s original developers, Red (also known for their Tengai Makyo series), had since moved on to work on ambitious titles such as Sakura Wars; Bonk 3 onward, meanwhile, were handled by A.I. Co., LTD. Without the original team, a platform to promote, or even a magazine left to tie into, Bonk’s prospects were limited. After one more sequel—Super Genjin 2, which remained Japan-exclusive—arrived with little fanfare, the caveboy seemed poised for extinction at the advent of 3D.

The Big (3D) Bang

The true death knell came when the mascot’s planned N64 debut became Bomberman Hero during development, which was released in 1998. Said developer Shouchi Yoshikawa in 2018:

Ultra Genjin was being planned during the game industry’s transition from 2D to 3D games. I studied the practical aspects of this quite a bit, but I think that nobody really knew what should be done with games at the time. As a result of trial and error, we were able to adapt the design for Ultra Genjin to Bomberman Hero.

It’s at this precise point that Bonk became a nostalgic artifact—a legacy IP, not a torchbearer to bring Hudson into the next generation of consoles and computing. The 2003 remake—Hudson Selection Volume 3: Bonk’s Adventure—was cute and stylish, but not necessarily groundbreaking nor meant for global consumption.

Wrote Brad Shoemaker from the Tokyo Game Show in 2003:

[…] The graphics have been updated, and though the game still takes place in two dimensions, Bonk and his enemies and some key game world objects are all in full 3D. The original game featured exaggerated and highly expressive character animations, and the remake has taken these to a new extreme–Bonk contorts wildly, his eyes bug out, and he generally goes kind of crazy in various situations.

But even during previews, the then-GameSpot reporter noted that chances of a U.S. release was slim to none.

“Forgive us if our coverage of this game makes you anticipate Bonk’s Adventure for a stateside release–for that seems a little unlikely,” Shoemaker notes. “Though it may never see the light of day on American shores, we’ll have our phones at the ready when the game comes out in Japan.”

Left: Bonk’s Adventure, 1989. Right: Bonk Brink of Extinction, 2011.

By this point, Bonk was already an obscure oddity to North American audiences. A simple, budget-minded remake wasn’t enough to give Hudson confidence that their already grim fortunes were worth hedging bets on another global release. Even Bomberman was stumbling to find his footing in 3D, with PlayStation 2 titles that received middling critical and commercial reactions, followed by infamous re-imagining Bomberman Zero for Xbox 360.

If Bonk was to ever fully emerge from his 16-bit cave again, it would take something much bigger.

Re-Inventing The Wheel

Jeremy Statz began work in the video game industry shortly after high school.

Like many in the field, he started out as a contractor, but his work was unique. Statz contributed commercial mods and map design to some of the most recognizable first-person shooters of the 1990s. It’s this early experience that his professional career soon grew out of.

“I started off doing Doom/Quake modding, worked at Raven for a while, worked on an MMRPG, then eventually landed at Pi,” Statz tells me via email. “Pi had done rescue missions on a number of Call of Duty titles, had shipped multiple Rock Band games, worked on Halo 2 Vista, etc. We were working on Bomberman Live: Battlefest at the same time, and I was a lead on both the projects.”

Battlefest is a notable title, as it is the final console entry in the Bomberman franchise released before Hudson’s acquisition by Konami. By this point, the gaming and casino giant had long since made inroads with the enfeebled company, which never quite recovered from the collapse of its main bank in 1997. In 2000, Konami purchased 5.6 million yen worth of stocks in the company, becoming its largest shareholder; in 2005, it increased its stakes to 53.99%.

At the time Statz was working with the company, then, things were already in a delicate state. But when presented with the opportunity to work on a reboot of the Bonk series, the longtime fan jumped—like the caveboy himself—at the opportunity. Titled Bonk: Brink of Extinction, the title was announced via a pre-rendered trailer in September 2009.

“I’d played Bonk 1 and 2, I had a TurboDuo back in the day,” says Statz. “I brought that into the office, actually, and had it on my desk. Speaking personally, I was excited for the opportunity, though it came with a lot of constraints from Hudson that weren’t really the route I’d have gone.”

Some of these restraints came in a design document that Pi Studios was to work off of. Statz was lead designer on the project, and oversaw much of the gameplay. He also created around 30 different levels for the title.

Says Statz, “I worked with a few others to create the original list of concepts for what the various stages would be, and what kind of gameplay they’d focus on. Generally as far as content goes I was the hand steering the ship. Hudson had provided a sort of design doc we were following as far as the character’s powers and so on, but things like level design were on us.”

Hudson leadership remained firm about many of the mechanics in the game and how they would be utilized. Pi Studios, however, was responsible for most other elements—especially the art direction.

“We had a lot of direction as far as what Hudson wanted, there wasn’t much novel that came from myself or from Pi in my opinion,” says the developer. “Admittedly it’s been 15 years. The general visual direction was all us, at least within the constraints of the engine we were working in, and for the era it was pretty good looking at times.”

Statz also notes, “I really wished we could have done it 2D personally, but that ship sailed before the project even arrived. These days you probably could.”

The Missing Link

I was provided with some development materials by Statz for this piece.

These included photographs of his level designs from the time, which detail various platforming concepts and a general arc of an in-world game, along with several logo concepts and 3D renders of Bonk himself.

But what caught my eye most in the ZIP file was another zipped folder: ‘BonkPC_3_19_10.’

“Here’s some materials I have lying around, and a copy of the game on PC if you want to try to get it running,” Statz noted in our correspondence. “Might need to be on Windows 2000 or something though, it doesn’t work for me on Windows 10, just starts up a black window.”

This was not just a set of levels—it was the whole of what would have been Bonk: Brink of Extinction. Pi Studios actually took the game to a completed, working state that could be played from start to finish. That includes an in-game map, separate gameplay modes, and cutscenes that play out the story through cartoon-y vignettes. The build I was provided even had working save states, controller support, and—albeit limited—a working options menu.

Indeed, Statz says the game was “mostly finished.”

“You could play all the way through it and do so on all the consoles and the PC,” he says. “General gameplay was kind of stiff, and given time that’s the biggest thing I’d want to improve. Admittedly the original games feel that way too, in my opinion. There’s probably some levels that could use another couple passes for appearance, but by and large it was close to release.”

But by 2011, Hudson’s situation finally reached a critical state. 

After several years of losing key figures such as Bomberman creator Shinichi Nakamoto and co-founder Hiroshi Kudo, the Japanese side of the company made a mass exodus to NDcube—itself headed up by former Hudson president Hidetoshi Endo. This left Hudson a shell of its former self, and with little to prevent a total acquisition by Konami. 

Which is exactly what happened. On April 11, 2011, Hudson became a wholly owned subsidiary of Konami; on March 1 of the following year, both companies were merged. Between then, shortly after the takeover, Hudson Entertainment, Inc.—the company’s North American branch—was liquidated. This was actually the second U.S. division for the company, with Hudson Soft USA being founded in 1988. That branch shuttered in 1995, with its remaining games sold off to Acclaim, before Hudson reestablished itself in America in 2003.

But now, a much sadder fate: Hudson Entertainment, Inc. ceased to exist because, for all intents and purposes, Hudson Soft no longer existed.

This lines up how Statz describes the final days of development. When asked what the official reason for the game’s cancellation was, he says, “No idea.”

“Hudson was in the process of getting shut down, from what I can tell,” he continues. “They failed to pay, like, three or four invoices in a row and we ran out of money. The company folded as a result, and none of the Bonk platforms shipped.  We did ship one of the Bomberman Battlefest platforms, I think PS3?  That game was ready to go on Xbox and Wii but never got sent to cert for the same reasons.  Everything was collapsing at the time, so what was there got left behind.”

If Pi Studio ran out of money, it was Hudson Entertainment, Inc. responsible for cashing the checks. Given the timeline, it’s plausible Konami shuttered the branch with little notice and even less time to tie up any loose ends—even if those “loose ends” were “paid contractors.” 

“It’s important to recognize that we were—and still are, I’m working with several of those folks still—a seasoned team that knew what we were doing,” says Statz. “This isn’t one of those disastrous reach-exceeds-your-grasp type projects, or something in development hell that went on for a decade.  We would’ve been more or less on time and on budget if Hudson hadn’t disappeared on us, and we produced what they asked us to make.” 

As for why Konami did not choose to proceed with the game, there’s never been any stated reason from the company. Brink of Extinction was simply shuffled under the rug—as were all traces of the game until 2015, when footage finally leaked online.

Statz continued to work in the industry with his company, Kittehface Software. 

“I’ve been running a small company that does a lot of platform porting, co-development, that kind of thing,” he tells me. “The same kind of thing Pi did but more in the indie sphere.”

He’s also keen to write about his time in the industry at some point. As for what he learned from Brink of Extinction?

“Stay on top of invoices as best you can, I guess, is the big lesson I took away,” Statz remarks.

Life Finds A Way

Is there a future for Bonk?

It’s unlikely. The only Hudson legacy brand Konami seems willing to trot out and center in new titles, post-acquisition, is Bomberman. Outside of this, the company has really only acknowledged the larger Hudson catalog with Virtual Console re-releases and novelty goods such as the PC Engine Mini. (Last year’s Felix The Cat re-release notwithstanding.) These largely reinforce the former developer/publisher’s status—and, by proxy, that of its games—as relics, versus beloved legacy IPs that Konami is keen to continue with new installments.

As of this writing, I’m still trying to run the build Statz provided. I was able to access menus, cutscenes, the overworld map, and just about every other aspect of the 32-bit program. But true to the developer’s own experience, I could not get the title working on a modern 64-bit platform across a myriad of compatibility settings. Getting anything to work in Oracle VirtualBox was also a nightmare, so outside of trying out a virtual machine on Linux… yeah, I’m out of options. Right now, the plan is to save for a decent vintage laptop or desktop from around that era, then test them out on there.

Statz says a total overhaul would be necessary for a retail release of the game in 2025.

“As far as I know nobody has a copy of the raw project files at this point,” he says. “These days you’d probably want to remake the whole thing in Unity, and if you want to save time maybe extracting models and artwork for reuse. A remake of a game that never shipped, there’s a novel concept. That’s probably the simplest route though, if somebody wanted to.”

Effectively, then? There’s one Bonk game left for me to play. In fact, if you’ve got a way to run it, you can play it too—it’s been sitting on the Internet Archive since 2020. Endless Mode’s editor-in-chief Garrett Martin has had a playable copy on an Xbox 360 debug unit since 2012. There are even full YouTube playthroughs from folks who have managed to get it working. 

These are tucked away and little-seen because—presumably—time has forgotten Bonk. People simply aren’t looking for him any more. Yet in working on this piece, I discovered a lot of people—including my boss, my editor, and a writer I’ve followed since childhood—remember him. And I’d wager a great deal more would remember him if the series was to ever be dusted off. Only time will tell if Konami wants to revive the prehistoric franchise. 

In a medium obsessed with reinventing itself, locked in a death spiral of capital and labor, so much time, effort, and money is often spent paving over the past to make way for the latest, newest, shiniest thing. At a time, Bonk was that thing—his prospects as glistening as his chrome dome cranium. Hudson aspired to nurse their own apex predator, only to be hunted down and torn to bits by the competition.

But all it takes is one curious archaeologist with a few hours on their hands to discover and think about what could have been. A world where Genjin 64 came to fruition, where Japan’s economic bubble did not burst, where Mario, Sonic, Crash, Pikachu did not exist. An industry and consumer base that cared enough about Bonk to push his seventh generation console debut into the limelight.

It’s a world that never came to pass, sure, but there’s value in digging into gaming’s past. History may be written by the victors, yet the finer points can be found in its victims. Because it’s there new stories lie—even if they can’t be enjoyed by everyone.

Long after being picked clean by hedgehogs and bandicoots, the bones of Hudson’s ill-fated cave boy still had one story left to tell.

I just had to do a little digging.

Thanks to Jeremy Statz (on BlueSky @jstatz) for the interview and materials provided for this piece.

Madeline Blondeau has been writing about games since 2010. She’s written for Paste, Anime Herald, Anime News Network, CGM, and Lock-On, among others. In addition, she has written, hosted, and recorded film criticism podcast Cinema Cauldron. Her published fiction debut is due out between 2026 and 2027. You can support her work on Patreon, and find her on BlueSky @mads.haus.