Retro spotlight: Bomberman GB

You wouldn't know it if you're in North America, but this Bomberman GB is actually the sequel to Bomberman GB.

This column is “Retro spotlight,” which exists mostly so I can write about whatever game I feel like even if it doesn’t fit into one of the other topics you find in this newsletter. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

Bomberman GB released in the spring of 1998 in North America, around two-and-a-half years after its original Japanese release in 1995. It was a Game Boy game — hence the “GB” designation — that was compatible with the Super Game Boy SNES add-on, as well as fully color compatible with the Game Boy Color. (The black cartridge was the giveaway there, if you’re unaware of how to know whether a late-life Game Boy game was also optimized for the Game Boy Color.) Maybe you know all of that admittedly basic information already, but what you might not know is that Bomberman GB is actually the sequel to Bomberman GB, and not Bomberman GB itself.

Let’s unpack that intentionally confusing sentence. Bomberman GB released in Japan in 1994, and also in North America later that same year. “But Marc, you just said in the previous paragraph that Bomberman GB released in 1995 and 1998 in those regions, respectively.” Both things are true! Bomberman GB, in North America and Europe, was known as Wario Blast: Featuring Bomberman!, which Nintendo published in both regions, while Hudson Soft handled those duties in Japan. When Bomberman GB 2 released in Japan, there hadn’t yet been a Bomberman GB outside of Japan. So, when Nintendo took up publishing duties a second time and didn’t add any of their own characters to the mix, they simply dropped the 2 in the title, because hey, to North Americans, this was their first Bomberman GB as far as they knew, anyway.

The only real difference in the box art for the two games is that 2, and what the absence of it does to the logo for the game. Bomberman is stacked into “Bomber” and “Man” in the Japanese logo so the GB and 2 both fit alongside it, but with more room to breathe in the North American box art sans the 2, “Bomberman” gets to be on one line, with the two bombs that have a G and B in them the bit underneath, instead. Somewhat surprisingly, Nintendo let one of the Bombermen on the cover keep his gun pointed right out at the main character Bomberman and also the audience, instead of changing it to a carton of milk or whatever Nintendo of America liked to do to censor adult themes in the 90s. It’s probably good that Hudson never made a Bomberman villain that was like, super into Christianity, or else Nintendo of America might have skipped publishing it altogether.

Image credits: Launchbox Games Database and MobyGames

You play as Indy Bomber, and yes, if the hat and the jacket and the whip featured on the box art wasn’t enough of an indication — peep the snake and the temple that’s behind him, too — this is supposed to be a riff on Indiana Jones. You do actually get to use a whip in this game, too: Bomberman games generally have a kick mechanic where Bomberman kicks a bomb across the playing area until its progress is halted by an obstacle or enemy it crashes into, but in Bomberman GB, instead of a kick, we get a whip lashing out to do the same thing. Sure, it’s not a new skill, but it’s a neat way to sell the game’s concept in a visual manner, besides just putting a hat on a Bomberman and calling it a day.

Another thing Hudson did is make sure to compose the title screen music as a bit of a nod to the theme used in the Indiana Jones movies, “The Raiders March.” Here’s that John Williams’ composition, if you need an audio refresher…

…and here’s Yasuhiko Fukuda’s similar to but legally distinct from title screen homage to help sell you on the Indiana Jonesness of it all:

It’s not an exact match, but it’s not meant to be. It’s just meant for you to listen along and go “hey, wait a second,” but not so close to its inspiration that if a copyright lawyer was doing the listening they’d be able to say the same thing with a far more foreboding and litigious delivery.

As this is actually the second game in the trilogy of Bomberman GB titles, there are some similarities to the first. Once again, there are temporary upgrades for the range of a bomb explosion and how many bombs can be dropped at a time, and more permanent upgrades that are acquired after defeating a world’s boss. The whip is the first of these upgrades, but you also get the ability to dash and later an add-on that lets you tackle and stun foes while dashing, the power to drop an entire line of bombs at once, and the “motobomber,” which is Bomberman’s motorcycle that allows him to jump over a single indestructible block.

As for the actual gameplay outside of these upgrades, however, this Bomberman GB is significantly different from its predecessor, and also a better game. Wario Blast was essentially designed to play like multiplayer Bomberman, with opposing bombers looking to blow you up before you could do the same to them. It was good fun, but it’s not how single-player Bomberman tends to work: usually the adventure mode and the multiplayer are fairly distinct ideas, outside of the core concept of “explode everyone who could even theoretically hurt you.” In Bomberman GB (2), the design is more traditional for Bomberman, with Indy Bomber taking down the various monsters and creatures in a level in order to open up the exit, hoping to not get stuck in a corner where he’ll explode himself with his own bomb or be caught by one of those foes, rather than chasing down and running away from other bombers, or hoping to force them to be caught in a corner by their own bomb.

The twist here that keeps this, again, from just being standard Bomberman: He’s Got A Hat Now! is the Mode system. Each of the game’s eight worlds is made up of a series of levels and then a boss fight, and before you start completing those levels, you need to choose which version of them you want to play. There’s a Mode A and a Mode B for each, and your selection determines what kind of experience you’re about to have. In world two, for instance, Mode A has hidden enemy hideouts that will kill you if you stumble into them, making exploration treacherous without setting off bombs all over the place. Mode B, though, has its hideouts out in the open working as spawn points that will pop out another every time you kill one, meaning you need to clear the hideouts before you can complete the level in question. In the first world, it’s a choice between clearing out all the enemies like usual, or having to defeat them in a specific order, as indicated by an arrow. The third world has you choose between how switches you need to trigger will operate, the fourth has you select to face off against stronger foes or go on a search for a real gem that’ll destroy the monsters after you blow it up, with fake gems emitting poison if you incorrectly choose them to explode, and so on.

This system gives you a reason to replay the game, for one, and effectively doubles the length of the single-player adventure. It’s a nice little touch that gives the game its own little personality in the Bomberman universe. Before you even start the game, you can also choose the “Lesson” mode, which lets you play the first level of each world to practice — this gives you a way to test out which gameplay mode you might want to pick when you get there, so you’re not going in completely uninformed when you pick between Mode A and Mode B in each world. Or you can just go in without any knowledge and pick what sounds good. It’s your playthrough, do what you want.

You have to love games designed with the Super Game Boy in mind. Look at that border and the full colorization! Image credit: MobyGames

Since Bomberman GB also uses a password system to keep track of your progress, and said system plops you down before the Mode choice in each level, there’s nothing stopping you from just doing both versions of each world before moving on to the next one, by inputting passwords to go back to the choice screen for the world in question. The only thing that carries over from world to world are the permanent upgrades, anyway: your bomb quantity and explosion range both reset when you move to a new world, regardless of whether you are coming back to it with a password or got there naturally.

It should be noted that Bomberman GB is a huge graphical upgrade over its predecessor, despite being on the same hardware. While the still art scenes were all wonderfully detailed and large, the in-level sprites were small, and made Bomberman and his enemies look a bit squished, to boot. Here, though, Bomberman looks like you would think Bomberman should look (only with a hat now). It’s still an 8-bit title, but it looks like it released far longer than a year after the original did. The only real downside to it, in comparison to its predecessor, is a boss gauntlet you’re forced to play before the final boss, who is also exceptionally difficult for Bomberman. You lose a power level each time you get a game over, which makes second attempts at a boss you’ve failed against rough, too. That’s just something to note, however: this is, all and all, vastly superior to its predecessor, and I like that game plenty.

Bomberman dreams of Bomberwoman. Image credit: MobyGames

Bomberman GB does come with a Battle Mode, even if it doesn’t seem like it at first. It’s meant to be a reason to get a Super Game Boy and plug it into that, as, with something like a multitap and Game Link cables, you could get four-player battles going on your SNES with this Game Boy title. You can play the Battle Mode on just a Game Boy or Game Boy Color, however, by plugging in the password 5656, which will launch the Battle Mode. You have to play against up to three computer opponents rather than humans if you play on a Game Boy, but it and its six arenas are all there.

You can play with a timer (two, three, or five minutes) or skip that altogether. The number of victories for a game can be toggled between one and five, and each of the six battle maps has their own specific setup. The first one, for instance, has no items at all: just however many Bomberman going at it with nothing but the basics at their disposal. The second arena has arrows that determine the direction kicked bombs will go in next, stage three has warps, stage four has poison gas that slows you if you touch it, stage five turns off the lights and forces you to ignite an oil can to see again, and stage six has all abilities unlocked, but turns off all items except for the skull that curses you and slows you down when you touch it. This curse can also be transmitted to another player by touching them, and this item is available in select other arenas, too, but it’s the whole point of this sixth stage.

Bomberman GB might not be quite as good as some of its contemporaries, like Super Bomberman 2 or Saturn Bomberman, but it certainly stands out in the handheld space. It’s a bit of a shame that the only way to play multiplayer with other people is through the Super Game Boy, but at least that accessory for the SNES had plenty of other justifiable uses, and was well-supported by Nintendo. Given North America’s version of Bomberman GB didn’t release until 1998, it’s not a surprise that Bomberman GB 3 never made it over here and remained a Japanese exclusive instead, but at least there was never a shortage of new Bomberman titles to play at this point.

If you want to give Bomberman GB a go, you’ll have to either find a physical copy — they’re going for an average of $13 according to PriceCharting as of this writing — or emulate it, because it’s not available anywhere at the moment. Which is a fairly Bomberman-wide problem these days, and one Konami probably isn’t going to set about solving, so, don’t wait up for that re-release, even on something like Nintendo Switch Online.

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