Hey all. Just a brief check in. Wanted to follow up on a few things.
I wanted to share this photo of the Bomberman Hero CD. I took this but forgot to post it. The cover looks burnt but it's just an image. You can see the CD itself in the background is just fine. It's so surreal to hold this and try to understand that you're not holding a damaged ass CD. I still can't get over how creative this is, in such a weird way.
Spoiler:
I also wanted to mention that while going through the 4-Komas, there are what appears to be some beta screenshots of Bomberman Kart (or the Kart mode, unsure what was in the process at the time.) It's worth noting that this layout looks a bit different from what we see in Land 2 or any of the other games. The HUD is at the top center and there appears to be a gold coin above there? I wonder if the coins had a more prominent role in the racing at one point.
4-Koma Image from Bomberman Land 2:
Lastly, in light of the recent hack on the Internet Archive, I decided I'm fed up posting thngs to multiple, volatile links. I recently purchased one of those lifetime cloud packages from Filen. It's only 100 GB so it's a bit limited, but I put a lot of compiled resources on there. One newer addition is Bomberman Music. I spent a good chunk of time recently collecting as much music as I can find. I even recorded the music from the Gamecube version of Bomberman Land 2 (it does sound different from the PS2 rip that's out there.)
Hi all. Just wanted to share that I've continued to buy and rip Bomberman CDs when I can find them. Here's a few that have been added since my last post. Click the list below for info about them, and the links below them for the actual rips.
Hi again all! Just a mild report for today. I was able to purchase a copy of the manual for Bomberman The Medal Arcade. It's about 200 pages of mostly technical jargon and how to actually build the cabinet. Page 27 or so has a few notes about the enemies and how to play the game so there might be a little substance there. Please enjoy.
Hey all! Been a minute. Here's a few random updates of some things worth sharing.
I've been working hard on amassing a collection of Bomberman Save Files. Specifically, been working on Japanese versions of many existing games, especially the Land series. I upload everything I can to GameFAQs but there are some things they do not accept. Everything I have is here on Filen (not all are mine, just put them all together.) So if you ever need anything, it's mostly all here.
In terms of the Japanese Land games, I discovered only a few small things worth noting. In Bomberman Land Touch!, two of the bosses have different names.
Serena = Harp ハープ
Bongo = Rhythm リズム
Slightly interesting there. Now in Bomberman Land Wii, there was a minigame that was only in the Japanese version. You move the tarot cards around to form words. It's Japanese characters so obviously, it didn't carry over well. But what's interesting is that in the challenge mode for this particular minigame, levels 3-5 actually use English characters!! Check it out!
They use quite a few different words, including Dog, Cat, Cow, and Air lol. Rather unexpected huh!
I did not notice anything in particular in the Japanese versions of Land PSP or Land Touch 2. I did complete the JP version of Bomberman Story DS. I'll have to take some screenshots of the cards but I am unsure if the text says anything worthwhile.
Whoa! That's awesome! Love to see more Bomberstuff archived, haha. I'm double surprised there isn't much efforts to preserve these old CDs for video game franchises, kudos to the people who do thar sort of thing.
I imagine the obscurity of them is why, goes for other stuff like bootlegs!
_________________ Hello! I hope you have a good day. ^_^
Hey all. Just wanted to pop in to say that Bomberman: Disney Stitch Edition has been preserved! Thanks to the help of LNRC of the Keitai Community, he helped dump a phone I purchased and we got this game saved! Yahoo!!!
However, the game is actually really boring lol. It's a single mode, basically a 2 minute score attack where the enemies keep regenerating and...there's no audio...hmm. But at least we know what it's about now right?
Well folks...hope you grabbed your bingo cards...because here's a doozy.
Oh yeah! Bomberman Collection Vol. 2 is finally here! I have been scouring auction sites daily for at least two years! It seems surreal to even find this. I'm glad I found it and am able to share it with you all. Another white whale of the Bomberman series officially captured!
I haven't done much with it. Scanned the images, dumped the iso, etc. I will say, the iso gave me some trouble when I tried to dump it. Both programs (Imgburn and Alcohol 120%) were able to rip the game 99% before running into some kind of weird errors. It did give me an iso file, but I am uncertain if anything is off about it. I did run the setup.exe file within the game and copy/pasted all the program contents as well. Those can be found in the .zip file. The individual games did run for me from their respective .exe files, but they did crash on occasion. I was running the game on Windows 10 so unsure if it would perform better in a virtual box type setting.
Anywho, please enjoy and let me know what you think. I'll keep my eyes peeled as our Bomberman wishlist becomes more and more true. Maybe one day we'll even run out of things to long for!
Hey all! Here's a back to back shocker for ya: this time I got Bomberman Victory!
I found me a pachislot! Hot dang! This was a bit interesting. For starters, it was a bit expensive. The machine itself cost $1100 USD. I used Japan Rabbit who was one of the few who were willing to even ship this to the US so they are a wonderful company. Now the shipping itself, about $900 USD so I'm already at almost double, just to acquire it and get it over here. Woof. Now because present day has to have a little suckage at the end...tariffs...
It wasn't bad, about $175 USD but still. Basically when it's in transit to this country, you get a notification where you have 5 days to pay it or it goes back so yeah...tariffs are just a bad idea man. Total waste.
Anywho, this guy can loaded with a LOT of cardboard. So much so, it actually brought a little stowaway from across the sea...a roach. Yeah...I was mortified when my wife found it the next morning. Needless to say I ditched the cardboard as fast as possible and called an exterminator. I don't want to jinx myself, but I think we made it. So as a word of caution, if you ever order something from overseas (especially a large item like this) open it outside and get that stuff outta there! Don't wait.
What's more, when I initially disposed of the cardboard, I accidentally threw out the keys that went to the machine! Oy!!! So the next day...I had to dig some of the material out of the dumpster and sure enough, a small bubble wrap pack had the keys. Got lucky on that one, yikes.
Now I had to wait another few weeks because I needed a voltage adapter. The one I'm using is from Amazon and it was about $70 USD. I had been reading around and pachislots are either 100v or 24v so if you get one, check the machine thoroughly for stickers indicating what it is. Most US outlets use 120v and some people take the risk, but I chose not to, not after all of this. The adapter is here and it works like a charm.
As far as the game itself, it's just slots. It does run without tokens, so that's nice, but even when I adjusted the odds internally, seems like it's hell trying to even get something to happen. The events seem to occur at random including boss battles and changing worlds. I can't quite seem to nail the timing (of course it's designed to be tough.) In the coming future, I may attempt to get some of the artwork out for scanning purposes as well as trying to record better footage of the video. I am unsure what all I can do. Just using a standard smartphone isn't quite enough. It catches a lot of motion blur. But I'll do what I can, you can rest assured. At a minimum, we have more photos of the cabinet and know a little more about the game itself.
The villains are known as Black Sentinel. There are four bosses across four worlds and they are led by Black Bomber who pilots a new mech. The intro lists all their names in English.
Thank you all for the kinds words. To be honest, some days are a little difficult. The fandom is so quiet and it often feels like I'm just throwing things into the ether, never really knowing what resonates with others. I'm glad to hear it brings some kind of enjoyment. Sometimes I question why I do it and others days, it feels oddly futile. I don't have an end goal to all this, just to try and increase accessibility and preservation of Bomberman to everyone as a whole.
I also wanted to mention I went back and updated some of my filen links. I had failed to give proper credit for many things so I went back and added some text files. A large portion of what I share is of my doing, but between filen and the archive, I have pulled together a lot of sources from others. I apologize for not asking or being more thorough upfront. I just wanted to gather as much as I could and make it as easy to locate as possible and I got a little carried away. Hopefully this corrects that error.
Likewise, anything I have put out there, is for anyone to share at any time. These things are my gifts to the fandom so please, use them as you see fit, truly.
Thank you all for the kinds words. To be honest, some days are a little difficult. The fandom is so quiet and it often feels like I'm just throwing things into the ether, never really knowing what resonates with others. I'm glad to hear it brings some kind of enjoyment. Sometimes I question why I do it and others days, it feels oddly futile. I don't have an end goal to all this, just to try and increase accessibility and preservation of Bomberman to everyone as a whole.
Believe me, what you're doing matters a great deal, not just to the fans, but to the gaming medium as a whole. Preservation is getting harder and harder, so any effort to make the franchise accessible is appreciated. The fandom might be quiet, but I think there's more of us than it looks like.
Thank you all for the kinds words. To be honest, some days are a little difficult. The fandom is so quiet and it often feels like I'm just throwing things into the ether, never really knowing what resonates with others. I'm glad to hear it brings some kind of enjoyment. Sometimes I question why I do it and others days, it feels oddly futile. I don't have an end goal to all this, just to try and increase accessibility and preservation of Bomberman to everyone as a whole.
Your efforts are very important and valuable to the entire community, Legato! I understand that a quiet community can be a bit unmotivating and I'll try to, from my part, to demonstrate more often appreciation for all the invaluable materiais you share with us.
Thank you so much for every exciting and interesting things related to Bomberman you brought to us for all this time!
Thanks again for the kind words everyone! It's good to know these things are seen and appreciated. I am grateful.
It seems this year is on quite a roll, because I come bearing another drop. Previously when I found Bomberman Collection Vol. 2, I was having issues dumping a complete iso from it. I asked around and got in touch with someone from the Hit Save community. Turns out there's some kind of "mastering" issue with the disc itself. To my knowledge, it's like some of unique anti-piracy thing that is preventing a complete dump. The person I reached out to is seeing if they can help us with a work around for that.
But to my point, I was talking to them about the different versions of Bomberman still missing and in a twist of luck, they had a contact in Korea who found the Korean version of Bomberman Collection Vol. 1! Neat!
So they dumped that disc and sent it to me and I was able to scan the packaging. Korean Vol. 1 is now preserved. Huzzah! Another lost media brought to safety! From what my friend told me, it appears to be nearly identical to the English version of Vol. 1. Huh.
Thats very interesting! It sure is very difficult to trace back some other asia releases in mid 90's/early 00's, so I find it very admirable that you was able to find it at all.