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Bomberman 94 back on VC
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Duke Serkol
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Post#1  Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 4:48 pm  Reply with quote + 
Bomberman 94 has been released on the Virtual Console in Europe as part of the hanabi festival. As such, all Japanese text in the game was left untouched, and don't expect the manual to offer any story either.

Unfortunate, but not all that imposrtant I guess.
So according to N-Europe, this would be the best Bomberman game ever. While it certainly is an excellent entry in the series, I can't help but wonder what these people were smoking when they wrote such an absurdity.

Bomberman 94 is memorable for one reason in particular: it introduced Louies.

Unfortunately it also suffers from a major setback: it introduced Louies. On the Turbografx.

How is this a problem? Well, simply enough because that system did not have any more buttons than a NES.
What does this mean? It means that if you get the remote control and a green Louie you had better be absolutely sure you are facing a wall before setting them off, otherwise your Louie will run in whatever direction you are facing, possibly getting you killed.
It's quite ridiculous actually. Other Louies also can cause all manners of trouble, like kicking a block, a bomb or lining up all remaining bombs you've got (which again can get you killed if they get caught in the explosion you just caused). Pure insanity.
In a way, this actually makes the usualless Louie (there is one that only makes a little dance... yeah big wtf there) somehow preferable to several others.
The button that sets off bombs is also the one used to stop bombs that you've kicked, so even if you ignore Louies there's still issues to contend with.

Then again, I guess you shouldn't worry about it too much since there is only one remote control power up in the game and it does not respawn. I mean, I'm pretty sure it does if you lose all your lives and get a game over, but if you just re-enter the level after you lost it, don't expect to find it there. This was probably done to make the game not as easy as some other title in which you can go back and collect any power ups you lost, but damn...
And it doesn't stop to just the remote control either. The wallpass, hearts and Lord knows what else receive the same treatment.
Oh and don't you think for a moment that it may be a good idea to kill yourself into a game over to get those bonuses. You are going to need as many lives as you can muster in your full playthrough against the last boss (he's pretty damn hard compared to the others!). Incidentally, this means you can't really get any passwords, unless you feel like replaying the game for as long (if not longer, you'll see why) as you did, in order to get back those lives. Thankfully, the Virtual Console allows you to suspend your game, so that's not so big a problem in this port, if not for the fact that once you beat the game you have to start back from the beginning (or get a password from GameFAQs and hope you can manage with just a few lives).

Considering all the above, it's absolutely absurd to even suggest that this could be the best Bomberman game ever. But it still is a very good classic, no doubt.

As many of us know, this game was essentially the prototype of Super Bomberman 3, which however did not suffer from any of the issues this one has and offered the additional benefit of two players co-op storymode (you'll be going at it all by yourself in 94).
But all of the above certainly does make 94 much more challenging than SBMan3. And an unique very interesting challenge the game offers is the blocks to coin mechanic.
Let me explain: the first time you will complete a level, all the blocks you didn't blow up will turn into coins and you will have a limited amount of time to collect them. These coins really make for a significant addition to your score, which in turn means you'll be able to collect lots of lives by exploiting this (the counter doesn't go past 9, but you can actually have more than that... and will likely need them for Bagular).
So the challenge is to clear the last part of the level (the block in the previous parts won't ever turn into coins) blowing up as few blocks as possible. Then you can always revisit the level and collect all power ups (since coins won't appear again anyway).
Quite a twist over the usual "blow up everything" gameplay style that is usually encouraged in the series.

The battle mode has some peculiarities too... it's clearly more advanced than the primitive battlemodes found in some of the old games (mostly on GameBoy) that would only give you the basic items, but some of the items that are never missing from the SuperBMan games are not found here, which makes for a different experience. For example, there's no punch or glove. The only way to make bombs fly is the blue Louie. This makes it far less likely for someone to immediately (right after the battle starts) throw bombs at you from the other side of the stage trapping you before you can create some room to move.
Incredibly enough, also one of the basic power ups is mising: the speed up (but it IS in the main game, and respawns too, don't worry about that). Now while getting a few bomb ups and fire ups is important to put up a good fight, in the other games it is often the amount of speed ups that ends up making the difference. In this one however all players move at the same speed, so that doesn't apply here.
It is certainly worth trying out.

In conclusion, a must download for fans of BMan (who don't already own a Turbografx with the game and several pads), but certainly it can't be called the series best.

...that's what Super Bomberman 5 is for :wink: 
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Post#2  Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 8:53 pm  Reply with quote + 
Excellent review. Man, there are things in there that I didn't even know or realize about the game, like the items not respawning and the life counter going over 9. And the coins only appearing the first time through. Then again, can't seem to get over my compulsive need to clear every block and grab every item.

I noticed that about the controls, what with the "Action" button being the same for everything, but, unfamiliar with the original TurboGrafx console, it was confusing me as to why it was like that. Especially if you play with a Wii Remote and accidentally hit the B trigger button.

As for the boss, I think I mentioned once that he's one of the toughest Bomberman bosses in my opinion. However, in his second form (dragon mecha), if you don't want to deal with him you can actually stand in the very top row of the arena without taking any damage. Then you can run down and set some bombs and hide back up there again. :peace: 
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Duke Serkol
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Post#3  Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 9:07 pm  Reply with quote + 
Dark Zaphe wrote:
Excellent review. Man, there are things in there that I didn't even know or realize about the game

Thanks!

Dark Zaphe wrote:
And the coins only appearing the first time through. Then again, can't seem to get over my compulsive need to clear every block and grab every item.

You're telling me... though I had played the game before, at least twice (if anything to see what changed in Mega Bomberman... not much) I only found out about the coins this time, because I accidentally missed a block.

Dark Zaphe wrote:
As for the boss, I think I mentioned once that he's one of the toughest Bomberman bosses in my opinion. However, in his second form (dragon mecha), if you don't want to deal with him you can actually stand in the very top row of the arena without taking any damage. Then you can run down and set some bombs and hide back up there again. :peace: 

Excellent advice!
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Post#4  Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2009 6:19 pm  Reply with quote + 
This is a well written and thorough review, but I particularly enjoyed the battle mode. It is missing some items, yes...but I think the level designs of the maps are quite impressive and gave me in some ways a new outlook on Bomberman. While a few of them don't make much sense (How do bombs explode in the water if they are not water bombs?) they all look really cool and I'm perfectly happy playing them.

The single player was quite unique and I liked it a lot for some reason that is difficult to explain, but I usually play Bomberman for the multiplayer. It's definitely not the best Bomberman, but it's a lot of fun.
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Post#5  Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2009 10:14 am  Reply with quote + 
dakirbydude wrote:
(How do bombs explode in the water if they are not water bombs?)

I've wondered the same thing before, but they have underwater levels in SB3, SB5, and Bomberman World, to name a few, if that's what you're talking about. Although interestingly in Neo Bomberman the bombs turn into underwater mines when you set them... underwater.
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Post#6  Posted: Sat Aug 08, 2009 12:00 pm  Reply with quote + 
It's not the underwater level i had in mind. There's even one of those on Generation or Jetters (I forget which since they are both for GameCube...) I mean that could be explained by a water bomb. There is a map on this game that has fire bombs blowing up in the water, and it looks like Bomberman is halfway above the pond. I mean they are obviously fire bombs and i like the look of the map, but it doesn't make sense. There's another stage that's completely underwater where the explosions are blue, so that one at least makes sense.

I've just wondered about it quite a bit...
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Post#7  Posted: Sat Aug 08, 2009 7:41 pm  Reply with quote + 
Hmm? Is it a battle mode stage, I'm assuming?

There's an entire world like that in Super Bomberman 3, as well as in Bomberman for the TG-16 (also for PCE, and released as Dynablaster on DOS). Coincidentally, it's the first world for each of those games. And of course it was repeated in SB5 since levels from SB3 appeared in that. The bombs aren't totally submerged anyway, they'd still explode.
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Post#8  Posted: Sun Aug 09, 2009 10:44 am  Reply with quote + 
Perhaps that's the case. Yes it is a battle mode stage. The single player also had mine carts which i thought was pretty cool ^_^
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Post#9  Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2009 3:36 am  Reply with quote + 
I killed more hours playing Mega Bomberman on the Sega Genesis than I can recall since we didn't have a TurboGrafx 16, let alone means to play the PCEngine versions of the games. I played it on the Sega Channel first, every month it was an option to download to the modem cart. For those of you unfamiliar with the Sega Channel, it was a cable TV option where they shat sega genesis games, demos, and rare game type stuff sometimes down the coaxial line into this pretty massive adapter that sat inside your Sega Genesis cart slot. You could only have one game on the cart at a time, and when you reset or turned the console off it would reset the Sega Channel software. It was flaky at times though and would lock up while sending data, or while you were playing sometimes. Then if it would not load games, you'd have to call Time Warner in our case, and have them reset the adapter from their offices. I probably had to call around 5-6 times over the year plus we had it. Lived up near Syracuse then, so I don't know where all this option was given to cable companies. I was told by people in the know that a large amount of these adapters were purposely destroyed when they shut down Sega Channel. Probably to avoid them being hacked into flashrom carts or backup devices somehow by the Internet wizards. We actually had Sega Channel before we had the Internet or a computer.

Anyways, when they axed Sega Channel or we dropped it from the package to save money, I bought Mega Bomberman on clearance from Kaybee Toys. Best $20 I ever spent despite the manual not being in color! I would love a version of it from North America that did not say greatest hits, and had a full color manual. :( I have SFC Super Bomberman 3 but have not played it as much as Mega Bomberman/Bomberman '94 for some reason. Both on the real cart and in the emulators. I exposed a lot of people to Bomberman by playing this in battlemode. People I knew liked the choices of bombers better than the SNES versions for some reason.
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