The Balloon Fight Wiki is a wiki centered around the Balloon Fight series of games. It documents each game in the series, elements of each of them, as well as other games which reference Balloon Fight. It is hosted on Fandom, and also has an associated YouTube channel, which is used to provide gameplay footage on relevant articles.
History[]
Before the current Balloon Fight Wiki was founded, there was another wiki under the same name founded by the user Torchickens on November 20th, 2010. It was initially hosted on Wikkii, but eventually merged to Wikia on May 25th, 2011. As of November 27th, 2010, the Wikkii version had a total of 31 articles, and as of 2015, the Wikia version only had 10 articles. This original wiki was conceptually similar to the current one, featuring articles about the games in the series, stages, enemies, and various elements of the games. This wiki was affiliated with the Kid Icarus Wiki, which was originally known as the Palutenapedia and also hosted on Wikkii. As of now, both the versions on Wikkii and Wikia (now known as Fandom) have been taken down.
The current Balloon Fight Wiki was founded by the user Bluestone19 on June 22nd, 2013. At first, the wiki primarily focused on just the games in the series as well as the characters and items which appeared in them. The project was temporarily abandoned several times early in its life, such as from July 2013 until January 2015. For most of the wiki's life, Bluestone19 was the only active editor, if there were any editors at all. The first other user to contribute to the wiki was a friend of Bluestone19 who vandalized a several pages. The next user to join was MordakaiJunior, who contributed to the wiki for about three hours on January 29th, 2016.
The founder of this wiki was unaware of the original Balloon Fight Wiki until about 2015, at which point he reached out to Torchickens asking for permission to use some of the articles from the original, since at that point it had become dormant. In 2018, Torchickens began to contribute to the new Balloon Fight Wiki, contributing greatly to pages related to Hello Kitty World, a character-swapped port of Balloon Kid which was previously poorly documented on the current wiki. She was later promoted to become an admin on January 7th, 2020. Currently, Bluestone19 and Torchickens are the only admins for the current wiki, and are the two largest contributors to the project. As of now, only a total of 13 users have ever contributed to the wiki.
The Balloon Fight Wiki YouTube channel was started on December 27th, 2015 as a way to upload gameplay footage from games in the series. The videos would then be posted on the respective articles on the wiki itself as further visual aids. As of September 2021, the channel has 43 videos and 3.5K subscribers. The vast majority of the views and subscriptions on the channel came from a video of gameplay from Game & Wario, demonstrating the "Gamer" game mode which featured a reference to Balloon Fight. There was also a Discord server created for the wiki on February 5th, 2020, although it has largely remained unused. However, the server was once used by two individuals to contact Bluestone19 for more information about Balloon Fight GB's box.
As of September 2021, the wiki has 303 pages, 595 photos, and 50 videos. Currently, the only consistently active editor is Bluestone19, although Torchickens last contributed in March 2021. The wiki is affiliated with the Nintendo Wiki on Fandom.
Design[]
Initially, the current wiki used a dark theme, with a black background and white text. The site header and links were themed to be orange, based on the color of the game's original logo. The site also had a repeating background made of arranged sprites from the original NES game, which the site still uses to this day when viewed in dark mode. This background was once used in an official guide released alongside the release of the NES Classic Edition, despite originating from the Balloon Fight Wiki.
An optional light theme was created for the wiki in July 2021, which is themed after Balloon Fight GB, the color remake of Balloon Kid. In this version, the text is black with a white background, and there is a similar Balloon Fight GB themed sprite arrangement for the background. The header and links are blue in the light mode as well, based on the water and sky seen in-game.
Logos[]
There were several logos and wordmarks used throughout the lifespan of the current Balloon Fight Wiki.
The first wordmark used on the wiki included just the words "Balloon Fight" written in the Minecraft font, followed by the word "Wiki" in a font based on the one used for the NES game's title screen. The Balloon Fighter, the main character from the first two games, is present in the bottom left corner.
The second wordmark, uploaded in 2015, is a slight variation of the first. The "Balloon Fight" text has been rewritten in a standard NES style font, and sprites of two green balloons and a spark have been added in the empty space.
In 2016, the wordmark was completely changed. Now, the text has been centered and stacked, with three pipes from the game on either side. There are also two sprites of balloons, as well as a sprite of the main character on the right and a sprite of an enemy on the left. The word "wiki" was written in a font based on Vs. Balloon Fight's logo, and the "balloon fight" text now has a blue outline.
In 2021, the wiki's wordmark was replaced with a logo due to a change in the layout of Fandom. The logo is completely written in the style of Vs. Balloon Fight's logo, with the word "wiki" also being redrawn to better fit the style. This logo was used as the icon for the YouTube channel before also being used on the wiki.