When Konami gave up A Super Bomberman Collection earlier this yearI hoped it was just a gateway to “the real stuff.” Make no mistake, the Super Bomberman The series is awesome, the best board games the 32-bit era had to offer. But move forward a generation and you’ll land on something truly magical and still unreplaced. A Bomberman made before the problems of 3D pet games were discovered, and all the more beautiful.
The fifth generation of video games constitutes its most important transition. The increase in bits was nothing compared to the daunting jump from 2D to 3D. Mario’s jump was the most graceful. Super Mario 64 is not only a miracle in itself, but a seamless translation of the jumps and heavy acrobatics that made the plumber famous in the first place. The game manual for other first wave games was not as well written.
sting, Shadows of the Empire And Explosion body it’s as if games are landing on a tarmac that’s still under construction. Flat chiseled masses of unfinished masonry with hasty spray paint crusted over. To this day I don’t know what Tetrisphere was trying to accomplish. Muddled intentions don’t make them bad games, but it illustrates the fog in which many developers were working. The very layout of the Nintendo 64 controller and its many C-buttons have a real “you get this” vibe.
Hudson Soft was eager to experience what 3D had to offer. They quickly arrived on PlayStation and N64 with sports titles and Bloody Roar. What the new dimension meant for little old Bomberman was more difficult. Its formula was elegant and unchanged since 1983. Move along a descending grid of blocks and crates. Throw bombs. I hope to blow up your enemies rather than yourself. They had developed its debut on N64 for six months before worrying about the competition and starting from scratch.
What they did was not Mario 64and critics of the time were quick to point this out. What these critics failed to understand was what Hudson produced. A weird, boutique, vibrant puzzle platformer that could only exist when everything was a puzzle.
In Bomberman 64the little hero with the long eyes was back. With bombs. Like before, explosions could eliminate enemies, obstacles and yourself. There was constant discussion about how you used bombs and how you navigated space. Bomberman couldn’t jump like Mario, but could jump over carefully placed bombs. Use power-ups and larger explosives at your discretion. Each level and world introduced new landscapes that could react to your bombs in very different ways. Snowy slopes. Fantasy castles with rocket boost tiles. Hot, burning magma.
Of the four initial worlds, the most memorable for me was Blue Resort. A slice of picturesque Parisian city with many secrets, courtyards and passages. Discovering that you could throw bombs at open windows looking for hidden objects felt like a new synapse coming to my teenage brain. A game where all you can do is throw bombs, but how those bombs engage your environment constantly fluctuates.
Bomberman 64 was greeted as a cult classic, but was chastised at the time for playing to its own tune. Some puzzles can be obtuse, especially during boss encounters. The camera was crude on a lot of N64 games, but Bomberit was hidden a lot. To unlock some of the final stages, you had to collect all 100 “gold cards”, which was a tall order between levels.
There would be three more Bomberman matches on the 64. Hero, The second attack and, confusingly, a Japanese exclusive also titled Bomberman 64 (the first was Raw Bomberman in Japan). Each clearly responded to the common complaint that Bomberman 64 was no closer to the most popular platform games at the time. These were perfectly polished but less distinctive games (which still cost collectors a fortune).
Still a hidden gem for some, the weather has also been very good for Bomberman 64. A strange duck that became appreciated as a beautiful swan. Fifth generation games have already been excavated for underdog house and techno tracks, and this era of the Bomberman series has some of the best. If Konami is motivated to conclude a 3D Bomberman collection, it would be wonderful to revisit some of the best from this more defined transitional era.