It's Bomberman... but he's in 1994! [Released in 1993.]
My retro game club is covering this game this month, and for once I managed to play through the pick… it helps that it's short. Just another instalment in Hudson's long-running Bomberman series, '94 didn't leave Japan in its PC Engine configuration, although the Mega Drive conversion did. There were graphical sacrifices though, so the original release is the best way to play and the only language barrier is some menus and world names.
The story mode introduces Bagura who becomes a recurring nemesis for Shirobon and pals, but here he's just some guy from space. Planet Bomber gets split into five chunks which act as the worlds you must battle through in order to restore things to normal and (presumably) rescue the other coloured bombers who are shown on the map screen.
Now I'm no Bomberman expert so I can't really say what's new or what's getting old at this stage of the series. The levels are complex mazes with world-dependent gimmicks, colourful tilesets, and crawling with enemies. I wasn't a big fan of the stages covering more than a screen, requiring scrolling around to see what's going on, but it does let them make more interesting layouts. The enemies all have particular behaviours and abilities, some of which are obnoxious to deal with like passing through soft blocks or taking multiple hits to defeat.
The difficulty level is quite high especially later in the campaign, and I would have got really ticked off if I hadn't used rewinds as much as I did. A single hit, whether from enemies or your own carelessly placed bombs, is enough to reset your special powerups (kick, walk-through bombs, the particularly game-changing remote detonation, etc.) but you do keep your bomb count and explosion size until a game over, and as far as I could tell continues were unlimited and didn't set you back too far. The bosses are a huge difficulty spike as well, albeit impressively large and with fun designs.
I do know that the big new addition for this game is Louie. Clearly cribbing from Super Mario World, Louie is a large kangaroo that your Bomber can ride, whose colour gives them different abilities. Also they hatch from an egg, obvious much? Green is the default and can dash, purple can jump over obstacles, etc. The best is the pink one whose ability is to do an adorable little dance. That's it. It's totally worth it! They do also have the benefit of taking a hit for you, letting you survive longer with your own hard-won powers intact. Since they are randomly found like all powerups, you can go a long time without seeing them; in my whole [tool-assisted] playthrough I only ever got four Louies and three of them were yellow! If you manage to keep one through the gruelling three-phase final boss you get an extra little heartbreaking scene at the end too. They're a good addition to the series and provide a fun little buddy dynamic along with their gameplay usefulness, so I'm all for them.
Of course a big part of the series is the multiplayer arena battles… I didn't touch that part of the game. Sorry! Bomberman already isn't my favourite thing and the PVP even less so. I'm glad I got to see an important step in the franchise with this one but it's a very punishing experience that often had me feeling powerless and not in control, as the enemies blundered around into me and I got caught in my own blasts. More practice would help hone my skills, but for now I'm just happy I got to ride Louie a few times and spend a little time in Hudson's colourful and cartoony world, it wasn't a million miles away from my beloved BC Kid which they're also involved with.
