Classic beat-em-ups emerged around 1989 with Final Fight and made an incredible splash on the arcade scene, especially in North America. At this time Arcades were changing from the pinball and classic video games with a wider variety of genres like shoot 'em-ups, fighters and beat 'em-ups. The behemoth Street Fighter II came out in March 1991, and was a smash hit. Fighting style games became big in the arcade and beat'em-ups were popular as well with sucessful ports to home consoles like the SNES version of Final Fight and the Genesis versions of Golden Axe to name a few.
Hudson Soft created many popular games in Japan. They're one of the big game developers that made use of popular media to make their games very popular in Japanese culture. They've made games for pretty much every console and continue to create and publish games today... sort of. Konami bought them and pretty much squashed most of their 3DS titles. I've enjoyed Hudson games, and I wouldn't mind playing more in the future.. if it be on the 3DS or Wii U.
My first introduction to Bomberman was Super Bomberman for the SNES in the early 90's. It was the first multi-player game that I played with up to four people (it was the first 4 player game on that console too). And while I believe that I was skeptical at first because the game looked simple, I soon found that it was so freaking awesome. Bomberman is one of the most popular multi-player series of all time.
Multi-player games up until that point were either platformers or fighting games, and my friends and I were amazed at the simplistic enjoyment we found from blowing each other to smithereens with bombs. I don't even remember actually playing the real game, I think we spent hours and hours just on the battle-mode.
Bomberman is one of the most prolific game franchises with over seventy titles and over 10 million games sold. The game follows a simple formula: a random grid is created for every level, and you have to beat the timer, blow up the enemies and find an exit... without blowing yourself up. Power-ups allow for more bombs, bigger blasts, timers, and other things to allow ultimate destruction.
I decided to play Bomberman 2 for a few reasons. I've played the original game before and the game itself is really dated. Games made back in 1984 just aren't as friendly to the player in my opinion. Bomberman 2 was made in 1991 and features better graphics, sound, and game play. Bomberman 2 is a better game is what I'm trying to say. It supports three player battle-mode with the NES Satellite! Besides sports games, there weren't many others that allowed for more than two players at once.
Advertising
I wasn't able to find anything for Bomberman 2. Not sure why. I did find a funny Sega Saturn Bomberman commercial though. Enjoy.
The Art
The box art is different for each region's release. The North America version suffers from logo overload. It blocks the artwork and seems strange to have a large yellow bar covering up most of the front. The European art looks the best in my opinion, but is also covered with logos, text, and other licensing information. The Japanese box art makes the game look like a fighting brawler type game. Seriously. Where are the bombs?
North America version
European version
I'm not sure why they changed the name to Dynablaster for the European release. I'm not sure if they got the original Bomberman in Europe... so a sequel might be strange? Marketing people are weird.
Japanese version.
The Graphics:
Bomberman 2's graphics establish the cute feel for the series. The first game was kinda clunky and looks like a game made in 1984. The sprite design and levels are pretty simple, the cut-scenes are pretty standard for an NES game. I like the graphical changes in color and textures between areas.
The Music:
The sound is unique to the Bomberman series. Jun Chikuma composed the music for Bomberman and many other Hudson games. According to wikipedia: "Since 1992, she has studied ney composition and Tunisian music under professors Slah Manaa, Ali Sriti and Zakia Hannashi at l'Institut Superieur de la Musique, and studied req under Haytham Farghaly of the same institute. She curates Arab-music.com with Yoshiko Matsuda, and has also made music for TV, CM, and movies."
The simple melodies for each stage, items, and game overs are staples of the series. The style for some of the songs almost evokes similarities modern chip music... making it almost more musically oriented rather than just ordinary game music found on many NES games. I'm probably over analyzing it. He's a ska-ish, down tempo version of the main theme:
Looking over some of the games I've played it seems that there were many female composers working in the video game industry early on. That's great, and shows that even in a typically male dominated video game industry, female composers have repeatedly created some of the best soundtracks to games.
The Results:
Framed for a robbery he didn't commit, Bomberman is thrown in prison. Using his explosive abilities, he's busting out of jail to right the wrongs that have been committed.
One of the first things I noticed is that I like that there's always a randomly generated room. For a puzzle type game and on the NES especially, it allows for some measure of forgiveness when you die. I like randomly generated stuff in general. The object is to kill everything without blowing yourself up. I find that most of my deaths are from getting cornered by enemies, or by putting down too many bombs, underestimating the blast length, and being careless by blowing up everything. I'll clear a level and then carelessly blow myself up for no reason. There's nothing worse than blocking your only exit with a bomb. And I keep doing it... over and over and over.
Each time you die you have to complete the stage all over again. All blocks, monsters, and the exit is randomly generated again. That sucks if you accidentally kill yourself looking for the exit. Besides that the game is relatively simple. There's a total lack of items though. One power-up per level.. Sometimes you won't find it unless you take the time to blow up every block, and with the timer ticking down... that isn't always an option. If you die, power-ups go away so it makes the game tough towards the end.
Each area consists of 8 stages. All of them are pretty much easy, and I happily blew myself up over and over. I didn't reach a wall until level 6-5. Much of it had to do with my own carelessness. There's something awesome about lining up a row of bombs and watching them take out half the screen. For as much as I died, I didn't feel like I was getting discouraged, which is weird. Other games totally frustrate the hell out of me, and with Bomberman 2, it didn't feel that way.
You aren't given much time to blow up the enemies and find the exit. There are so many blocks in your way, that it gets really difficult. Here's where the random level generation begins to work against you. Sometimes you're walled in from the start, and with two minutes to clear the level... it just isn't enough time. With random luck on my side, I was able to finally complete all forty two levels.
In the end you break out of jail and track down the Black Bomberman who framed you. He immediately gives up and then the credits start to roll. There was no end boss fight, all I had to do was beat every level. Kind of different than other NES games.
Black Bomberman gives up.
During the end credits there's a password that comes towards the end, it is K3456712 and it opens up a sound test menu when you enter it. Kinda neat to hear all the songs and sound effects. Many old games had this feature.
VICTORY!
Statistics:
Deaths: 123 Continues: 41 Game Overs: 41 Time Overs: 3 Levels Completed: 42 Approximate Time: 4 Hours High Score: 74200
I'm working on completing a game right now, but it's taking longer than expected.
So I'm introducing a series of thoughts on video games I'd like to call CONSOLE WARS.
16-bit Advertising Wars: Nintendo vs. Sega
I've always known that there have been console wars in the worlds of video games. That was something that, as a kid, I didn't worry about even though I saw the commercials and bought the merchandise. I'm aware of the marketing and advertising slung my way twenty years ago by the companies that wanted my parent's money. It was on television, in my breakfast cereal, and in the cartoons I watched. I found myself on team Nintendo, and when the SNES came out I knew that I had to play it.
Things didn't heat up until both Sega and Nintendo both had competing 16-bit systems. Nintendo owned the market share during the 8-bit era, and as they introduced their next generation console, the Super Nintendo, they made it clear that all your favorite characters from the NES would be found in a new 16-bit home. That continuity would ensure that most video game players would have to upgrade to the newer, better system. Because Nintendo controlled the video game market for so long, they had a recognizable brand name, with recognizable characters, and lots of customers in Japan and in North America. Sega did not. Anyone remember Alex Kidd? Nope. It wasn't until Sonic the Hedgehog, two years after the Genesis launched, that Sega finally had a flagship mascot of their own that they could market. By that time, Nintendo had a full house: Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Donkey Kong, and they were developing more. This opened up the 1990's for serious competition between the two companies.
At the same time both Nintendo and Sega were fighting an equally vicious portable console war. They were both grasping for ways to make more money and to outdo the other. The Gameboy made it possible to have a video game experience that you could take anywhere. All the familiar faces were there, Mario, Metroid, Zelda, and the mega hit Tetris. Sega upped the ante with Gamegear, a portable console that addressed the Gameboy's only flaw: the lack of a backlit color screen. Never mind that the Gamegear was more expensive and ate AA batteries up like candy. The advertising blitz by Sega made the Gameboy look dull and lifeless. When you're #2, you have to work twice as hard to win, and that's what Sega did with their advertising.
It seemed like the majority of Sega ads and commercials were negative towards Nintendo products, or geared to players that had no video game affiliation. It also seemed like they made more commercials. While most of Nintendo's ads ignored Sega completely, they ran a few negative ads in Sega's direction.
Sega made some technological leaps with their CD-ROM system and 32X adaptor to extend the life of their Genesis system. They also created Sega Channel which offered unlimited game play for a monthly fee through cable providers, something that in 1994 was way ahead of its time. While these innovations should have put Sega ahead, they found themselves at the wrong end of hardware capability. The CD system suffered from slow speeds due to the limitation of CD-ROM technology at the time, and Sega Channel suffered from electromagnetic "noise" inherent in older RG-59 coaxial cabling, which made downloading games difficult to do. Nintendo had wanted to create a CD-Rom device for the SNES, but that fell through, they did have an interesting satellite gaming device that was only available in Japan, but bringing that to the US would be prohibitively expensive. Nintendo would find out that their tried and true cartridge technology would eventually backfire on them later (I'll discuss this at a later time).
When technological comparisons were used up, Sega took a different approach to attack Nintendo. Boasting a cheaper alternative to the more expensive Nintendo 16-bit system. They did this multiple times.
But Nintendo beat Sega in the console wars for various reasons. They rode into the 16-bit generation with everything on their side. They had the fan base, the market share, the games. They managed to score big hits with Mario Kart, StarFox and Donkey Kong Country. They obliterated the portable game market with a cheaper, and technologically inferior Gameboy system, which lasted from 1989 until 2001 and beyond because of the insanely popular Pokemon franchise. But at the same time it was Sega's determination for competition with Nintendo and made them a profitable in North America. Many things contributed to this rivalry that could not have been foreseen by either company.
The rise of fighting games was unique to the 16-bit era. Arcade adaptations of fighting games began to flood into console market. Street Fighter II was a huge hit in the arcades and was ported to the SNES first, eventually selling over six million copies. Mortal Kombat was ported to both systems, but because the Genesis version kept the blood and gore of the arcade original, it sold far more copies than the toned down, non-bloody SNES version. The controversy surrounding violent fighting games probably added more fuel to the fire, giving consumers more of a reason to buy the Genesis version.
By the end of the 16-bit wars Sega had caught up with Nintendo in many ways: they had recognizable characters, edgy commercials, portable consoles, and products that competed with Nintendo at every turn. Their sales numbers didn't reach the height of the SNES, but they had many titles that sold over a million copies, and that would have been impossible a few years earlier. Both Sega and Nintendo left the 1990's and the 16-bit console wars with a better understanding of what consumers wanted and did not want, and in a way it made for better video games.
In the end they both wanted to prove how crazy they were... and you were crazy NOT to play their games.
Epilogue:
I'm wondering why there was a divided Nintendo and Sega crowd growing up. I think the majority of friends I had owned a Nintendo, but there were a few kids I knew that didn't. What made me think that they were insane? It was all the stuff that I was led to believe by the folks at Nintendo. I think I was led to believe that everything produced by Sega was crap. What about the Sega made it so different? It was black for one. The controller had three buttons. It looked like it could swallow your soul.
That's the effects of advertising. I now think that Sega had some pretty awesome games, and that the Sega Master System actually looks better than the NES.
Blasphemy!
But I can play Sonic on my Wii now. We won the war right? My side won. Only... Sega didn't die, they just changed directions. That kind of makes me sad. Console wars have changed, and new sides have been drawn. I wonder if there's still bad blood between Sega and Nintendo? Who knows. This is a topic that still incites incredible emotions on the interwebs and forum sites. Some old rivalries never go away.
