Re-release this: Bomberman Max
You could think of that name as more like "Bomberman & Max," considering the game features the two characters, and less like "Max Bomberman," but either way, these games aren't available anywhere.
This column is “Re-release this,” which will focus on games that aren’t easily available, or even available at all, but should be once again. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.
You can thank Pokémon for this, of course, but there was a run for a while there of multiple versions of the same game being released on handhelds. They weren’t exactly the same, and could interact with each other in a fascinating way that kept you from needing to actually buy both of them for yourself — think about trades in Pokémon and how those worked when all you had was a link cable and friends rather than internet access — but there were sure were two of them where there used to just be the one.
Hudson Soft wasn’t immune to this trend by any means, to the point of perpetuating it rather than just glomming onto it. There was Robopon, which had Sun and Star versions at release in December of 1998 in Japan, and then a third Moon version a year later to really bring that Pokémon comparison home. This wasn’t as obvious in North America, where only Robopon Sun released, but in Japan, there were the three versions, plus connectivity with a Nintendo 64 Robopon game (Robot Ponkottsu 64: Nanatsu no Umi no Caramel; like with Pokémon Stadium, the Transfer Pak was needed for this interactivity), as well as a pair of Game Boy Advance sequels.
Hudson also went this route with their most significant and established series, Bomberman, and did so on the Game Boy Color by introducing a new ally: Max. So, you had Bomberman Max: Blue Champion, which featured Bomberman himself as the playable character, and then Bomberman Max: Red Challenger, which starred the titular Max. The pair first released in Japan in December of 1999, and then in North America six months later, with both titles published stateside by Vatical Entertainment. The games were essentially the same, with the playable character in each corresponding to which version of the game you picked up, but there were also levels exclusive to Red Challenger and Blue Champion. Well, temporarily exclusive.
Rather than trading Pokémon with friends in order to acquire the exclusive pocket monsters from whichever version of Gold and Silver you didn’t buy, in Bomberman Max, you’d trade these exclusive levels with your pals. There are 80 shared stages in Red Challenger and Blue Champion, but each has 20 of these version-specific levels, as well. Upon clearing those areas, they are then available to trade. For example, level 1-2 is only available from the start in Blue Champion, while 1-9 is in Red Challenger, but by completing these levels in their respective games, they become available to trade to someone with the other game and without those levels. This might seem a little confusing when you start — why do I not go from 1-1 to 1-2, and that sort of thing — but the order of levels is non-linear for a reason we’ll get to later.
Rather than using the link cable capabilities of the Game Boy Color, Hudson opted for the infrared sensor of the handheld for data transfers. Which means that, even if you play one of Red Challenger or Blue Champion in a backwards-compatible Game Boy Advance and connect it to a Game Boy Color with the correct GBC link cable, you won’t be able to transfer these levels. A shame, that, but on the other hand, this technology is pretty neat, and used for multiple purposes in Bomberman Max.
If you want to see a video of the IR connection process between two Game Boy Colors, and the transferring of levels and other functions available through this linking, such a thing does exist:
What’s a bit wild is that Hudson used the IR sensor for this kind of connectivity in these matched pair games before Nintendo did: Pokémon Gold and Silver didn’t use the IR sensor of the Game Boy Color for connecting with other players to trade and battle, as Generation II Pokémon games limited its use to receiving Mystery Gifts. IR trades and battling would be introduced in later Pokémon games on the DS, though, when IR sensors were incorporated into the Pokémon game cartridges themselves.
Hudson did use the IR functions of the Game Boy Color for battling with friends, through the Charabom creature system. In some levels of Bomberman Max, you’ll be tasked with rescuing caged Charaboms. For those who aren’t Bomberman aficionados, Charaboms are helpful little monsters that sometimes aid Bomberman in battle or exploration, or give him special abilities, or are just fun to collect and use for stuff outside of the main game, as in Bomberman Max. You’ll find upgrades for your Charaboms scattered around levels, just like with any other upgrade that’s actually for Bomberman or Max’s use: blow up soft blocks, and pick up what’s there to be picked up if an item appears. The Charabom you’ve got equipped will grow stronger as you pick up these food items, and then you can have them battle against your friend’s Charaboms via IR linking. You can also fuse the Red and Blue versions of the same Charabom together in order to unlock a rare Charabom that can’t be accessed otherwise!
There’s the connectivity aspect for level swaps and Charabom battles, but there are also special tiles in some of those 80 stages, and when Bomberman or Max, depending on the game, steps on those tiles, everything pauses and a menu comes up. You get the choice of ending the stage right there, since you reached the tile at the end of the maze — the goal of these stages — or you can grab something with an infrared beam, like a television remote, and use it on the IR sensor of the Game Boy Color. This will unlock a hidden stage, and you’ll be teleported right to it: each of these is full of items for upgrading whatever Charabom you’ve got equipped at the moment, and also granting you access to some Charaboms in need of rescuing that are exclusive to these hidden stages. The first time that I experienced this, I had no idea it was coming, but I happened to be sitting right next to a remote for a CRT television, and was delighted when I realized what it had me do and why.
Now, unlocking (and acquiring) the other 20 levels isn’t necessary for completing either version of Bomberman Max. However, in order secure a 100 percent completion rate, they’re most certainly required. Luckily, completing the 80 stages that come with whichever version of the game you pick up is enough to secure the good ending, instead of the one that’s just a single screen pretty much implying that you didn’t do well enough to earn more than that basic acknowledgement. You just have to actually play all of those stages and successfully complete them to get there. Which isn’t as straightforward as it sounds, since stages aren’t linear.
Each stage in Bomberman Max has a specific goal. Defeat all enemies. Defeat all of one enemy type. Blow up every soft block. Rescue the Charabom. Step on this special tile. There are a whole bunch of them beyond those meant to give the game — which uses the classic top-down Bomberman formula of walking around a maze and blowing stuff up until an exit appears — more variety than some of its predecessors had over the course of its 80 (or 100) levels. When you complete the goal of a given stage, you’re actually given a choice of exits, however. Blue portals will send you to another stage in the area that you have yet to complete, while red portals will send you backward to a level you’ve already completed previously. Which means you can bounce around in levels you’ve already finished off, whether to, say, use a TV remote on that tile now that you’ve got one with you to use at the appropriate time, or just to build up an arsenal of bombs and explosion range and footspeed and all of that in a level you’ve already managed to complete, before taking on the next new one.
Bomberman, after its early years, was used for basically anything Hudson wanted to do, which is how the character ended up in action-adventure games, mini-game collections, racing games, a racing game with a dungeon crawler in it for some reason, a shoot ‘em up, a side-scrolling platformer, 3D platformers, falling-block puzzle games, a tactical RPG, and with elements of monster collection and monster battling regardless of the genre in question. There was still plenty of reason to go back to the classic formula, though, especially since producing games for the Playstation and Nintendo 64 was allowing Hudson to experiment so wildly with what Bomberman was and could be. Bomberman Max, then, was the successor to the single-player experience of games like Saturn Bomberman, only with more added to the experience so that it wasn’t “just” that experience once again. Hence the Charaboms, the missions, the multi-cartridge IR experience, the different kind of multiplayer format, and so on.
So, while in some ways, Bomberman Max might seem a bit simple given it has so much in common with even the earliest iterations of Bomberman, it’s advanced so far beyond the formula of Bomb Everything Until The Exit Appears, while still maintaining that feel. And yeah, sure, sometimes also a level is just that, too. But it’s a classic setup for a reason, you know?
Outside of the 20 version-exclusive levels, the only other notable difference between Blue Champion and Red Champion is that there are some Charaboms only available in one or the other. Which, at least, is more sicko-oriented than the level part, since it doesn’t impact your completion percentage or anything, and is entirely down to whether Charabom selection is even more important to you than which protagonist you’re playing.
Bomberman Max: Ain was a third version of the game that combined elements of Blue Champion and Red Challenger together into one cartridge, but unlike with Robopon Moon, this wasn’t a retail release. Instead, it was a limited edition giveaway of 2,000 cartridges, through a lottery held by a Japanese stationary company, Pentel Ain. Per the Google translation of the news release from 2000, you’d be entered into the contest if you purchased Pentel Ain mechanical pencil refills in a participating location, and would, at the least, receive a Bomberman mini mascot for doing so — a little guy for your keychain or backpack. Despite the rarity, Ain actually costs a lot less than you’d think it would on the secondary market: it’s listed on PriceCharting, as of this writing, at $112 for a loose copy, and current Ebay listings aren’t too far off. The bigger problem is that there just aren’t many of them out there for sale at a time. There’s one complete ($349 plus shipping) and one loose ($139 plus shipping) on there at the moment. You’re better off looking for the ROM, if you’re that curious and not an avid collector of all things Bomberman.
There would be Game Boy Advance sequels to the Bomberman Max games, which used a similar connection setup with unlockable, exclusive levels and hiding the true 100 percent ending behind you having friends with good taste, but Max himself became a staple in the Bomberverse for a time. In addition to Max 2, he features heavily in Bomberman Tournament, where he’s brainwashed into fighting against Bomberman, and returns as an ally in Bomberman Generation. He’s a villain, for some reason, in the Bomberman Jetters anime, and has a corresponding Bombergirl character, Grey, meant to represent him there. He was also added as a playable character in the Switch version of Super Bomberman R, but it’s otherwise been pretty silent on that front in the Konami years. Which fits just about everything they do with Bomberman, really.
Bomberman Max isn’t available anywhere legally besides the secondhand market, but, like with SNK releasing both versions of SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters’ Clash in one package in the present, Konami could make a combined Blue Champion/Red Challenger work on a re-release. Or they could be sold separately, and through local connections, the additional levels could be unlocked, and Charabom battles could occur online — there are options, is the thing. Will Konami take any of them? I’ve written about a lot of Bomberman games in this space over the last five years, and the answer to this has always been no. But hey. It still has to be said, and will be the next time a Bomberman game gets a write-up here, too.
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