Super Bomberman

Super Bomberman

SNES - USA - 1st edition.

Developer Hudson Soft Publisher Hudson Soft Published 1993-04-28 Platforms SNES Genres Action, Maze Themes Action, Cartoon Series Bomberman Multiplayer Simultaneous versus Distribution Commercial

Super Bomberman is an action strategy maze game developed and published by Hudson Soft for the SNES on 1993-04-28. It is the first game in Super Bomberman series, was followed up by Super Bomberman 2, and is the eleventh game in the Bomberman series.

In the game, the evil Carat Diamond and his cohort, Dr. Mook, have created a robotic Bomberman and plan to use it to take over White Bomberman's home, Peace Town. You play as White Bomberman who must fight through several stages and infiltrate Diamond City and stop the villains. Like in the previous games, you drop bombs to blast through walls and enemies in various mazes. Although the overall formula is the same, and the power-ups are familiar, this game has a whole new set of stages and bosses.

Personal

Own?	Yes. Loose US SNES cartridge.
Won?	Yes.
Finished	2021-02-21.

I was aware of the Bomberman titles on the NES, but never played them when they were popular. I had played the NES titles in an emulator and didn't think they were anything impressive. When I was around 16 or 17, a coworker talked about how much fun Super Bomberman was to play with friends, but I never got a chance to play it then. In my late-20s I setup my computer with four gamepads and had some friends over, so I finally tried out Super Bomberman with 4 human players and found it to be highly addictive. At subsequent gatherings, we played through the various other SNES Bomberman titles, including the Japan-only releases. In my 30s, I bought the SNES collection of a friend, which included Super Bomberman, making it the very first Bomberman title I actually owned. While looking for a new game to try, I searched though the games I owned, but had not yet beaten, and saw this title. I played it and beat it on the same day.

Review

7	7	5	6	8

Best Version: SNES

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• Supporting four human players really made multiplayer so much more fun. This was a fantastic party game at a time when most games maxed out at two players.
• In the US, the game could be bought in a bundle called the Party Pak which came with the Hudson Super Multitap allowing for four human players to play simultaneously. The Super Multitap could also be bought separately in every region as well.
• The various arenas in battle mode add a lot to the complexity of the game.
• Jun Chikuma's nicely remixed the music from her earlier Bomberman titles and made several new songs as well to produce a soundtrack that is both familiar and fresh.

Bad

• Continuing after losing all your lives in solo mode means restarting with no previous power-ups. However, since you'll likely have died in the more difficult levels, this means you'll probably very quickly die again due to being out-classes by the enemies. It's not a very enjoyable way to handle continuing, but it sure beats having to start the game over from scratch, and, if you restarted with all, or even some, of your power-ups, death wouldn't be much of a setback, and you'd easily be able to plow your way through the game. I think a slightly better way of handling this would be to only let you continue at the beginning of a world, that way, you have time to build up your arsenal again before getting to the more difficult levels and the boss.
• Despite the improved hardware, the game isn't that much different than the Bomberman titles which came before it. Most of the power-ups are repeats, and the enemies, though drawn differently, are echoes of earlier bad guys. Really, it's just the bosses and 4-player multiplayer that are unique to this game. Everything is is just a repeat with higher fidelity.
• The game doesn't take advantage of the new 16-bit hardware. The SNES was capable of a lot more, and the game just looks like an 8-bit title with more color depth.
• I would have appreciated a bit more length to the single-player mode. It feels like it ends before it wears out its welcome, and, while I needed a handful of continues, it didn't seem all that challenging to me, and I completed it in a single sitting. I know this game is really meant to shine in multi-player mode, but, had I paid full price for this game on the SNES, I'm sure I would have been a bit disappointed.
• I needed a spoiler for the final boss as nothing in the manual or the game hints at how to defeat him.

Ugly

• Nothing.

Media

Box Art

• 

  The Japanese box is a chaotic cartoon with the bombermen flanked by the game's various bosses and a giant bomb. It certainly conveys what the game is about!

• 

  The US box is also a cartoon, but the bombermen are slightly more humanoid. Rather than show the bosses, only the regular enemies are visible, and the scene loses its pizazz.

• 

  The European box uses the game's more cartoony style of the bombermen and depicts a battle scene where they're fighting each other. This is my favorite of the three.

Documentation

• 

  Manual - UK.

• 

  Manual - USA.

Graphics

• spriters-resource.com/snes/sbomber

Screenshots

• 

  Continue and password screen.

Videos

Longplay.

Play Online

SNES (Europe), SNES (USA), Super Famicom

Representation

Strong female character?	Fail	There are no women.
Bechdel test?	Fail	There are no women.
Strong person of color character?	Fail	The Bomber Men don't really have a clear race.
Queer character?	Fail	There are no queer characters.

Titles

Until this release, Bomberman was censored as Dyna Blaster in Europe. This was the first game to use the proper title.

Language	Native	Transliteration	Translation
English	Super Bomberman
Japanese	スーパーボンバーマン	Supa Bonbaman	Super Bomberman

Links