40 years of Bomberman: Bomberman Tournament

The North American name makes this sound like a multiplayer-focused affair instead of an improved update on Bomberman's action-adventure games.

July marks 40 years of Hudson Soft’s (and Konami’s) Bomberman franchise. Throughout the month, I’ll be covering Bomberman games, the versatility of its protagonist, and the legacy of both. Previous entries in the series can be found through this link.

Back when Hudson had their own console to worry about, Neutopia was their homegrown action-adventure series. Heavily inspired by Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda, Neutopia arrived on the PC Engine and Turbografx-16 in 1989 and 1990, respectively, with a sequel following for the same platforms in ‘91 and ‘92. These were good games, too — a little derivative in some respects, since it was, after all, a clear shout of “Hey, we’ve got Zelda, too!” even if you couldn’t call it Zelda. It had its high points, too, however, both in its design (the Fire Wand/Flame Rod was a Neutopia invention first, for instance), and it both looked and read splendid, thanks to the power of the console it was on and the localization efforts put into it. The boss fights were impressive in scale, visually, and in terms of the patterns you had to figure out in a way the first Zelda ones were not: Neutopia had its own things going on, too, is the point.

One thing it failed to do as well as The Legend of Zelda, however — and the reason it holds up but only to a degree amid the now decades of Zelda sequels and other games inspired by its gameplay — is that the puzzles were often a bit lacking. There was a lot of block pushing. As I wrote in a Neutopia review:

Those puzzles, though… that’s where some of the bad about Neutopia comes in. They’re overly simplistic, and also numerous. Push a block to solve the puzzle. Alright, now push a block for this puzzle. And this one! The kinds of puzzles you’re presented with aren’t varied enough, and they’re also a constant, since there aren’t any keys. In addition, the general lack of items you receive in the game means fewer ways to solve things, which feeds into the lack of change from puzzle to puzzle. You can throw more and more enemies in, and different ones, in “puzzles” where the solution is killing everything in sight, but over eight dungeons across four spheres, you’re going to want some more variety than that. Neutopia doesn’t have it.

Now that makes much more sense. Image credit: LaunchBox Games Database

Hudson Soft wouldn’t fully solve this problem while Neutopia existed, since they made just the two of them before calling it quits on the series. Part of the reason they dropped it was because there just wasn’t a need for it any longer after the era of the PC Engine ended: Hudson then had to focus their attention on the series that had been received well by both audiences and critics, and work with other console manufacturers like Nintendo to figure out what would work on those platforms. Neutopia was fine and all, but it also seemed clear that Hudson didn’t have ideas for a Zelda rival that would actually rival Zelda by the time they were able to focus exclusively on developing, publishing, and licensing out for other platforms.

That it, until they decided that the appropriate way to develop a Zelda-style game was to combine its basic, core gameplay with that of Bomberman. The first of these attempts was Bomberman Quest, on the Game Boy Color. And it is, no question, a superior game to either Neutopia, in no small part because it’s far more clear in it being a Zelda game that also just as much isn’t a Zelda game. Well, alright. It’s still pretty Zelda-like, between the definitely not an ocarina “flute” for traveling around, the Power Bracelets for lifting rocks, the shovel that lets you dig for hearts, dodging arrows in caves that have switches in them, and the bombs. Wait, no, scratch that last one, Bomberman came first on the explosion front.

The use of bombs in Quest is what truly separated the game from the ones that inspired it: huge chunks of the game could resemble or straight-up be Zelda like in Neutopia, but the fact bombs were used for combat, for puzzle solving, for basically everything helped make Quest its own thing built on the genre Zelda had defined and then iterated on again and again over a decade-and-a-half. It allowed for an expansion of dungeon and cave design that went beyond Neutopia’s block pushing ethos, and, unless you battled everything in Zelda with bombs all the time, that felt completely different, too. Hell, even if you did fight everything in Zelda games with bombs, they were nowhere near as versatile or powerful as what you could utilize in a Bomberman game, given those are upgradable in a number of ways, can be kicked, thrown, and include multiple types, too.

Which brings us to Bomberman Tournament, developed by A.I. Co., Ltd. and Amble. This wasn’t A.I.’s first go with Bomberman: as they worked as developers on Bomberman D-Daman on the Super Famicom, Bomberman GB 3 for, you guessed it, the Game Boy, and Bomberman Hero on the Nintendo 64. A significant portion of their game development was in contract work like this, and also included series like Mario Party, Super Robot Taisen, Bonk, Densha Da Go!, and arcade ports to consoles like Raiden. Amble also worked on Bomberman D-Daman, which was their lone Bomberman credit to this point, but would go on to develop the sequel to Bomberman Tournament on the Nintendo DS, which released in Europe and Japan, but not North America.

Known as Bomberman Story in Japan where it was published by Hudson Soft, but Tournament in North America and Europe where Activision had publishing rights, this is a further expansion of the Zelda-inspired action-adventure Bomberman titles, one that further separates itself from the former. Gone are the items that act like or just are ones you’d find in a topdown Zelda, with those replaced by something that would become a Bomberman staple: Karabons. (They’re usually Charaboms, but Activision didn’t limit their meddling to the game’s title.)

The Karabons can grow their strength by picking up various items you find in exploded rocks, trees, walls, and so on, and then fight in tournaments to help you win money to buy items or for items themselves. More importantly, though, is that each Karabon has some kind of special purpose or use. Some are story-related, like how Pommy Sea lets you travel underwater (required for the second dungeon), or how some of the Karabon exist solely to open up the boss doors in the dungeons (and are created through fusion of two other Karabon in the dungeons in which they’re necessary), but for the most part, they have powers that’ll be utilized when you “set” (read: equip) them, or grant Bomberman passive abilities that can be used whenever context allows. You can’t throw bombs or kick them until you find a Karabon that grants that power, and each of those are passive ones. If it’s dark in an area and you want it to light up, though, you’ll have to set Dorako for at least a moment to brighten the place, or in a less obvious usage case, remember you can set Sharkun in order to find whatever hidden door or staircase or whatever is not visible otherwise.

Ceedrun lets you press B to use a shield that can block some attacks, like arrows or the feathers fired by the boss of the third dungeon: you can’t defend against bombs, though, so don’t bother trying. Some Karabons can increase or even decrease the blast radius of your bombs, both of which can be useful depending on the space you’re crammed into. And others still can have their powers stack or work in sync with your bombs, such as with ToughGuy, whose power lets you pickup and throw bombs. Combine the HoldBomb with ToughGuy’s passive ability, and you can continue to hold a bomb in the air as it charges in power each second, then throw it for a devastating blast you don’t want to be near. And some optional Karabon have powers you don’t want to miss out on, like FireKong, who allows you to detonate bombs remotely in the order they were placed.

Like a proper action-adventure game, you’ll need to backtrack to find all of the Karabon and their useful powers. You’ll find the cave that Dorako can light up well before you find that Karabon, for instance, but if you remember that cave exists and go in there with him, your reward will be yet another useful Karabon: Thunder Liger, the one you find in the dark with Dorako, will make enemies move more slowly when set. No small thing when you’re trying to trap them in between bombs! By the way, not all of them, but some of the Karabon powers made their way to Bomberman Tournament by way of Neutopia. Bomberman really did inherit that particular kingdom.

Image credit: LaunchBox Games Database

You would often see Karabon compared to Pokémon because they’re monster creatures you train to help you, and they also battle each other for the hell of it, but it’s a comparison that falls apart when you look at it closely. They’re more like living items, with the closest relation to Pokémon being that some of them act a bit like those particular pocket monsters you’d equip a Hidden Machine move like Fly or Surf on. Battling with them isn’t a massive point of emphasis, though, and while 25 is a lot of “items” to choose from, it’s a small number of trainable monsters. But hey, if Hudson Soft did want to truly introduce Pokémon elements into a Bomberman, they’d be allowed to: they were the ones that made the Pokémon Trading Card Game… games… after all, and Robopon is a Pokémon-style game featuring robots instead. They paid their dues, let them Pokémon if they wanna.

In addition to the 25 Karabons, there are also various bomb types. Bombs that only work underwater, landmines, remote bombs that let you move them after placing them… you’ll find situational uses for these bombs, especially against bosses that might be moving around a little too fast or flying above you or whatever, all of which would keep your normal bomb placement from working. You build these bombs by finding materials out in the world, often given to you as a reward for finishing a quest or because you bothered to seek out NPCs to speak with, and they’re well worth whatever time you have to put in to acquire. Sometimes a boss might seem difficult or its defense impenetrable, but it’s often just because you’re using the wrong bomb for the job: rarely do you get a new bomb type in Bomberman Tournament and then have its used shoved down your throat. It’s more a situation where you’ve got to remember that you have this particular weapon in your pocket for later. (Which also makes it fairly unlike some Zelda games of the era!)

Bomberman can also upgrade his blast radius and the number of bombs he can drop at a time by finding items that allow for this over the course of his quest. In addition, you can find armor to cut back on the amount of damage you take, hearts to increase your overall health (both from NPCs or quests and from boss fights), and new footwear that will speed up your movement. Bomberman isn’t always moving as sluggishly or with as little to do as in the above video, basically, which is taken from the very beginning of the game as Bomberman finds his very first Karabon pal, Pommy.

While Bomberman Tournament pulled liberally from Neutopia in some of its dungeon design (as well as the Karabons whose powers were items in Neutopia and Quest), it all feels different here. Finding hidden homes of citizens of the world who will give you advice or items or even heal you is straight out of Neutopia, which had taken the idea from The Legend of Zelda, yes, but had also made it even more of a central mechanic. The block puzzles actually work in Bomberman Tournament because they’re a change of pace from all the other puzzle types you have to solve, which include switches, buttons to depress with weight, hidden stairs and doors, traps, and the most common one, combat: throwing bombs around to explode everything is a puzzle unto itself, lest you find yourself the one blown up. So, when you enter a room and see that it’s full of explodable objects and enemies, you have to take a second to figure out the best way to go about blowing them all up. Both to progress to the next room and to avoid dying from self-inflicted wounds in the process of getting there.

While this is all a simple affair early on, once you can kick bombs and throw bombs, it all opens up. Now the enemies are more trapped in there with you than you are with them, so long as you approach things the right way. Start throwing bombs in a way that you can skip them over each other and objects in the way, right to where they’ll land in a way that traps an enemy in the coming explosion. Be careful about spamming these throws and bouncing bombs, though, as you might blow open a path that will bring an explosion to you, eventually, or destroy all the Karabon power-ups, health pickups, or coins that enemies and exploded blocks dropped during your bombing run.

Around for the ride this time as well is Max, from the Bomberman Max titles: he’s not playable here like he was in those games (well, at in the Red version of them), but instead in distress after trying to get at the root of an appearance of the five Dastardly Bombers, a group you might know from some of the Super Bomberman titles on the SNES and Super Famicom. They showed up via meteors crashing into the planet, a giant tower appeared, dungeons were occupied by baddies, and weird things started to happen. Max investigated at the behest of Doctor Ein and his impressive mustache, then disappeared himself, leading to Bomberman’s arrival to solve what remained unsolved, plus the disappearance of his ally.

The story is pretty basic, but it does its job setting you up for an excuse to travel around a new world investigating caves, meeting new people, collecting helpful partners, and exploring dungeons. And it all looks great, too: the Game Boy Advance was a 32-bit system, and while the sprites aren’t as large as those found on the 32-bit Saturn Bomberman, they’re still detailed and animated in that impressive cartoonish way Bomberman sprites are known for. On the audio side, the music is good: June Chikuma, like with Quest, didn’t handle composing, but did put together the battle theme. Unsurprisingly, it’s maybe the best track in the game, with an urgency lacking from the rest of the proceedings:

You could slot that right into a Mega Man title, which might make it a little for an action-adventure game, but hey. Robots and sci-fi deserve a great, fast-paced beat, regardless of genre context.

None of that is meant to be dismissive of the rest of the quality soundtrack, by the way, which fits well with the gameplay, is plenty catchy, and doesn’t get old even when you are having a hard time defeating a boss and have to walk through the same dungeon again and again until you succeed. Koichi Seiyama handled the entire rest of the composition, which, when you look at their credits, it stands out: a whole lot of Guilty Gear work, and then a single Bomberman action-adventure game to break that up.

That mention of dying was what we call a segue: Bomberman Tournament both succeeds and fails a little in how it handles death. The good: you start over from the game state of your last save, meaning, if you defeated every enemy and blew up everything that blows up on the way to a boss fight, saved, then lost in said boss fight, all of those enemies will still be defeated, all those paths you explosively opened up still open, and any healing items you used in the fight will also be back in your inventory. The bad: you go back to the first room of the dungeon and have to travel through it all over, and the rest of the puzzles — blocks that need to be pushed, switches that need to be hit, staircases that need to be revealed, lights that need to be lit — have reset. So it can be a bit of a chore, since you can’t just save before a boss and try, try again.

That’s the only complaint to lodge with what is otherwise an excellent action-adventure game, and this isn’t even just me saying so. Bomberman Tournament just missed out on what Metacritic would have labeled as “Universal Acclaim” by a measly two points of average score — 88 out of 100 instead of 90 — and audiences recognized its greatness, too. Its overseas publisher, Activision, saw revenues rise 30 percent during the quarter Bomberman Tournament released, with that game and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 on the Game Boy Advance accounting for 31 percent of their United States sales in that period. Everything about that is wild to take in over two decades later, yes, but there it is: a portable Bomberman game once made Activision stockholders very happy.

Bomberman Tournament wasn’t just the single-player action-adventure game, either: as the first Bomberman released on the Game Boy Advance, it also included multiplayer — with up to four players — via the portable’s link cables. This mode, too, was considered a winner: it included enemies to defeat in addition to other players, and 10 different power-ups to improve your play with, such as lining up your bombs in a row or the ability to punch bombs a few tiles away and make them bounce should they land on something in the process. Or, you know, to mess up your play: having your controls reversed isn’t great, but play it right, and you can make your frenemy back up into a power-up like that in order to avoid taking an explosion to the chin. And then blow them up while they try to adjust.

Maybe most impressive, though, is that you could play with four friends even if you had just the one copy of Bomberman Tournament among the four of you! Remember those days, when technology was seemingly being used for good? And you can play multiplayer without any friends around as well, as up to three computer-controlled opponents can be inserted in their place. So you can still get the full experience of a crowded arena of explosive cartoon death even if it’s just you, or you and one friend experiencing it.

Bomberman Tourmanent isn’t available anywhere these days, besides secondhand or through emulation. It’s worth seeking out, however, regardless of which avenue you take, as it successfully built on its predecessors — be they of Hudson’s own devising or Nintendo’s — with new, original ideas, all wrapped up in a tightly designed action-adventure title that won’t feel like others you’ve played even if it remains familiar to genre appreciators.

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