Bigfoot Bonkers

Retired from the collection in 2024. Gone but not forgotten.

In Bigfoot Bonkers, the goal is to surround your opponent with the trail of your constantly-moving "mouse", while avoiding the bigfoot obstacles. This style of play is often referred to as "light cycle" play, although this game predates Tron by six years.

After inserting a credit, the player can select between a one-player or two-player game, with no additional credits needed for two players. For the one-player game, the player must use the right joystick.

The bigfoot obstacles are very important for the one-player gameplay. Until one of these obstacles is encountered, the computer simply mirrors the player's inputs, making a victory impossible. Once an obstacle is encountered, the two paths deviate from each other, introducing the necessary variability to the gameplay.

While this game is emulated in MAME, there are a few issues, most notably that the one-player mode does not work at all. Also, the attract-mode sounds on the actual game can be reduced by a DIP switch setting on the PCB, which is not emulated.

Bigfoot Bonkers is my first black-and-white game, and I am amazed by it's simplicity. The 5V power supply and sound amplification are internal to the monitor, so it's basically just a monitor and PCB!

I've included a video of Bigfoot Bonkers in action on the videos page.