What the original Bomberman looked like

[blue lander]

(I apologize for the blurriness)
http://img73.imageshack.us/img73/5355/bomberman1df6.jpg
http://www4.airnet.ne.jp/makuta/tagoo/grp/324.png

Yup, Bomberman started out as a goofy looking guy in overalls and a hat. It wasn't until the third game (After Bomber Man and 3D Bomber Man) that he became the little robot guy we all know and love. Go figure.

[Steven]

lol wow. I didn't know that, thanks for posting the pic. It makes me appreciate the look of Bomberman a lot more now!

[Nebagram]

For someone with such a distinctive look Bomberman sure has had a lot of identity crises over the years. :-/

[Moo Cow]

holy shit! I would've never known.

[mailman187666]

thats a new one to me too. The thing I love about this site is learning so many new things about vids.

[blue lander]

I prefer the look of the new Bomberman as well, but I wish they kept the little feather in his hat. It made him look like a pimp. Now, this game was released in the UK as "Eric and the Floaters" for the Spectrum. A lot of poorly researched websites and magazines call it a "precursor" or "distant ancestor" of Bomberman because it's so different. But it's a direct port of the first game called Bomberman, so it is the first Bomberman.

A few other interesting facts about the original Bomberman:

* No powerups.

* Only the floater enemies, who are actually really smart when they want to be. Mostly they just wander around.

* The points you get for killing floaters or getting treasure are random

* You and enemies can walk through bombs (which takes out 99% of the strategy of the game).

* The level ends when you kill all the enemies, or when you find an exit.

* Bombs do not automatically line up with the bricks. Meaning you can blow up a quarter, a half, or three quarters of a wall (and still can't walk through it)if you don't line it up exactly.

* Every few levels there's an "Auto bomb" level, where Bomberman drops bombs automatically. You drop 4 or 5 bombs in a row, they explode, then you drop 4 or 5 more.

[XxHennersXx]

what is this game for?

[blue lander]

That particular one is for the PC-8801 line of computers, but I think there were versions for the PC-6001, FM-7, MSX, X1, and probably the MZ-700 or MZ-2200 as well. Pretty much all of the major Japanese 8 bit computers of the day. It was also released in the UK on the Sinclair Spectrum. There was no console port, and as far as I know all of them came on cassette tape except the MSX version, for which there is a cartridge version (probably a tape version as well). There's a beecard (Precursor to hucard, sort of looks like a TG-16 card) version of Bomberman for the MSX as well, but it's closer to the version that appears on the Famicom/NES.

[MegaDrive20XX]

Wow, that's awesome. From a guy who looks like he got out of a Zuit-Suit riot to a lovable cartoony character. I wonder who made the decision to change the character.

[Trebuken]

Kaboom is the original Bomberman.

[blue lander]

I guess he got out of jail, started dressing like Gilligan, and then became a robot!

[Mr. Smashy]

What the heck is a toriger?

[blue lander]

I think it's their valiant effort at spelling trigger.

[ProgrammingAce]

I prefer the look of the new Bomberman as well...

Are you sure about that?

http://blogs.columbiatribune.com/gameover/boxart_jap_bomberman-act-zero.jpg

[ghostangelofcky]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Unabomber-sketch.png

[Mr. Smashy]

I think it's their valiant effort at spelling trigger.
That can't be right. It's not a gun game, is it?

[smork]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Unabomber-sketch.png

Perfection in wanted posters. All other criminals can only aspire to such stylishness.

[FVJVMVP]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Unabomber-sketch.png
Okay, you lost me. What exactly does this have to do with Bomberman?

[dubiouscubanx]

Okay, you lost me. What exactly does this have to do with Bomberman?

That's the unibomber, IIRC. He's a kind of bomberman, I suppose.

[DefaultGen]

.....

[Alison DeMeyer]

So what is Dynablaster I played on my Amiga? Does it have anything to do with Bomberman?

[blue lander]

The Amiga Bomberman games were localized as Dynablaster in the UK, I'm guessing it has something to do with IRA bombings at the time. But it is an official port, not some shareware knockoff or something.


That can't be right. It's not a gun game, is it?

No, but the Japanese often use trigger and button interchangably.

Delving deeper into the whole "Bomberman appearance" thing, the first appearance of Bomberman as we know him was actually in Hudson's localization of Lode Runner! The little evil robots in the game looked like this:http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/3999/lrunnerza3.png

Which is basically exactly how he looks in the first Famicom/NES Bomberman.

[Gemini-Phoenix]

Evolution is a funny thing. Just look at how much Jumpman and Donkey Kong have changed within the last three decades... I was also going to mention MegaMan, but it was mentioned above

[Snapple]

I am completely dumbfounded as to how Megaman has not been mentioned in this thread yet.

Well, one main difference is that only the box art for Mega Man was bad. The character in the game looked the same as all his other games.

For Bomberman, not only is he in overalls on the cover, but he's in overalls on the title screen there, too. So this was an intentional character design, and not simply whatever the Hell happened to Mega Man's box art.

[blue lander]

Plus, as far as I know, Megaman looks normal in the Japanese boxart. This isn't the case of some low paid American artist doing crap boxart for a localization, it's the complete redesign of a character.

Another cool feature of the original Bomberman is that the enemies actually have moods, which sort of makes up for there being only one kind of enemy. They change randomly without any warning, sort of like women. You can tell what mood the floaters are by the expression they have on their face:

* If they're smiling, they just wander around happily without making any attempt to kill you. As long as you stay out of their way, you're fine. They won't go anywhere near bombs, either. If you leave one in their path, they'll simply stop right outside the blast radius and wait for it to go off. Since they can walk through bombs, it's virtually impossible to kill them in this mood.

* If they have a smaller smile, they'll try to attack you if they can see you, otherwise they're still wandering around aimlessly. They still won't risk getting blown up to get you, though.

* If they have an indifferent look on their face, they'll go after you when they see you and are willing to risk getting near bombs if they think they can get past them in time.

* If they turn red and have an angry face, they go directly after you even if they can't see you. They're pretty dumb, though, so if there's a block between you and them they can't figure out how to go around them, and they couldn't care less about bombs. So they're easy to blow up, but they also can kill you if you aren't careful.

[Pete Rittwage]

The PC88 has a lot of early choppy versions of Hudson and Nintendo games. You can find really bad versions of SMB, Excitebike, and others. :)

[Barbarianoutkast85]

Someone showed me a picture of the original Bomberman a few years back when I was in college. Then I completely forgot about it. So you refreshed my memory.

[blue lander]

I've got 4 or 5 of Hudson's early cassette tape games for the PC-88, X1, and FM-7, and while none of them are fantastic, they're a lot more fun than most of the other games for those computers. You can usually rely on them to have unique but simple game play and decent graphics. Thankfully most of them don't even attempt scrolling, although the X1 is a bit more capable than the PC-88. Scrolling vertical shmups like Luxor are virtually unplayable, it's almost like you're watching a slide show.

Hudson was also responsible for the Nintendo games ported to the PC-88 and a few other systems. They're not as good as the NES versions, but they have their own charm. I've got the three Mario games and Balloon Fight so far, still hunting down the rest.