Air Zonk (PC Denjin Punkic Cyborg in Japan) is a side-scrolling shooter developed for the Japanese video game console known as the PC Engine / Duo, and for its American counterparts, the TurboGrafx 16\Turbo Duo. It was also playable on the PC Engine GT, and its American counterpart the Turbo Express. It saw North American release in 1992. Unlike most Turbo games, it did not come with a jewel case. Instead, it was packaged within a cardboard box with a plastic insert.

The game is light hearted and features humorous bosses, such as a sentient garbage heap. Gameplay involves both shooting and bombing. At the start, you must pick a companion character who you team up with to perform special attacks. Within the diverse shooter (shoot-em-up) genre, Air Zonk falls neatly into the "cute-em-up" sub-genre.

Air Zonk was developed by Red, and published by Hudson Soft in 1994. It was an attempt to update the company's image via a modern, punk-ish character called Zonk (Zonk bears a remarkable resemblance to the Turbo's caveman mascot, Bonk). Though some consider this to be a knee-jerk reaction to the popularity of Sega's Sonic, Air Zonk is widely considered to be an excellent shooter.

Air Zonk received a sequel in 1993 — Super Air Zonk: Rockabilly-Paradise (also know as CD Denjin Rockabilly), which was released in the SuperCD format. It requires the Super System Card to play, and is much more rare than its predecessor, though widely considered to be of lower quality (lower production values, no paralax, more limited sprite articulation).

Zonk: Mascot for TurboDuo video game console

The protagonist in this game, Zonk, is a cyborg version of Bonk--the mascot for NEC Corporation's TurboGrafx 16 video game console. When TTi released the DUO console (successor to TurboGrafx-16), Zonk was adopted as the official mascot. Zonk adorned nearly all of TTi's promotional material, and was even featured on the package art for the TurboDuo console.

External links

• The Bonk Compendium (Covering all games and references to Bonk and Air Zonk)