Super Bomberman Collection

Over a decade after Konami’s acquisition of Hudson Soft, the Super Bomberman Collection marks a potential sea change for the treatment of the character’s history. Up to this point, it has been exceedingly rare for Konami to do anything with Bomberman’s past beyond the occasional merchandising opportunity or Bombergirl character. Even before the acquisition, the Super Bomberman games skipped Nintendo’s Virtual Console service and never had any re-releases outside of an incredibly obscure PC compilation. But at long last, this collection by Red Art Games brings all five Super Bomberman games together (with a couple of bonuses) and gives people a chance to easily check out some of the most notable games in the entire franchise.

Super Bomberman

Bomberman’s Super Famicom debut broke new ground in several ways, being the first console entry to offer co-op and also being the first SFC game to make use of the Super Multitap it came bundled with. This entry has Bomberman facing off against a new one-time villain in the form of Carat Diamond and is also the first time Black Bomberman was an ally instead of a villain. The gameplay will be familiar to anyone who has played Bomberman before, but some mainstay power-ups like piercing bombs and the boxing glove were introduced here, making this a properly iconic entry.

Super Bomberman 2

Arguably the most widely recognized and beloved game of the Super subseries, Super Bomberman 2 deserves its reputation. This game marks the introduction of the Five Dastardly Bombers, who are some of the most well-known characters in the series. This especially applies to Pretty Bomber, who would become a recurring character from here with nearly equal billing to Bomberman himself. This game doesn’t do much differently from the previous game beyond the very important addition of the Power Glove, but its battle mode is more robust and its single player mode is more challenging. This was also the last of the five Super games included that North America originally received, so it remained a SNES multiplayer mainstay for years to come. The special gold cartridge Caravan version of SB2 is unfortunately not included in this collection.

Super Bomberman 3

If you’re lamenting the absence of the PC Engine games (or Mega Bomberman) in this collection, this game is the one you should play. Super Bomberman 3 is effectively a Super Famicom remix of Bomberman ‘94, offering most of the same elements while adding in things like co-op and the Five Dastardly Bombers. Multiplayer here is even more comprehensive than the previous two games and revenge carts appear for the first time, allowing players who get eliminated to still have some skin in the game.

Super Bomberman 4

The first Japan-exclusive Super game pits Bomberman against Bagura and the Four Bomber Kings in a journey through time and space. This entry replaces Louies with rideable enemies that have varied and powerful abilities. While more iterative than inventive, Super Bomberman 4 offers lots of multiplayer features (such as character-exclusive abilities), co-op tweaks, and an overall great presentation, making it a very likeable game. This collection also offers the first official English translation of the game, though a fan translation has been available for a long time.

Super Bomberman 5

Fittingly for the finale, Super Bomberman 5 is the biggest game on the collection. This time around, Bomberman does battle with Terrorin, a clock-shaped villain who releases the Fiendish Bombers, a gang of wacky and deadly criminals, from prison to wreak havoc. SB5’s single player mode is by far the most ambitious of the bunch, offering branching paths across 100 levels and even two endings. It’s also a celebration of the Super series as a whole, reusing enemies and level designs from the four previous games to complement all its new additions. Like Super Bomberman 4, this entry also received an official English translation for the first time for this collection. Super Bomberman 5 had a special gold cartridge release, but it’s unfortunately not present for your viewing pleasure in this collection.

Bomberman (NES)

The first console entry is very humble compared to the Super games, but it’s greatly improved compared to its computer predecessor and manages to establish the foundational template for nearly every game after it. Across 50 mazes, Bomberman needs to defeat all of the monsters in order to escape from the underground bomb factory he’s trapped in. It’s a repetitive playthrough, but still worthy of praise even now for its enemy variety, interesting secrets, and early Jun Chikuma soundtrack. This game is perhaps most known for its strange connection to Lode Runner through its reuse of sprites and ending that has Bomberman becoming that game’s protagonist.

Bomberman II

In this late NES sequel, Black Bomberman robs a bank and White Bomberman gets framed for the crime! In order to escape from prison and prove his innocence, White Bomberman has to blast his way through six different areas. This is an impressive release for the platform with visuals and audio that closely resemble the 1990 PC Engine game in particular. Compared to its direct NES predecessor, it’s a big improvement that also offers proper multiplayer, but when compared to the 16-bit entries it released so close to, it doesn’t hold up quite as well. Still, this game has only ever been re-released one time before this collection, so its inclusion is very much welcome.

Red Art Games did a great job with this collection’s presentation and the features on offer are also worthy of praise. Each game has easily accessible manuals, region switches, notable power-ups displayed on the menu, and the ability to unbox the games to see what they looked like in their original physical forms. The manuals for Super Bomberman 4 and 5 are unfortunately restricted to Japanese, though, and the NES games don’t have their boxes or any other details available since they’re filed away in the bonus menu. For the games that had secret battle mode arenas, you can put in the Konami Code as the collection boots up to easily unlock them all.

The emulations of each game offer the expected options like save states and a rewind button. There’s a single CRT filter and a few screen size options like “Pixel Perfect”, but the CRT filter isn’t likely to impress anyone used to the real thing. The strangest choice was the use of SNESticle and cddNES for the collection’s emulation according to the in-game credits; the former is a very old emulator known for its use in Fight Night Round 2 and Red Art Games appears to have the license for ares as well, which is a much newer and open-source multi-system option. It’s unclear why exactly this decision was made, but the emulation quality is solid regardless.

In terms of bonus features, the most significant one is the Boss Rush mode, which lets you fight every boss in each game in a row. There are three difficulties that determine your starting power-ups and lives and your best three clear times are recorded for each option. There’s no online leaderboard for this mode, which feels like a big missed opportunity. Beyond that, there’s a music section where you can listen to the soundtracks for each game and a gallery where you can look at various pieces of concept art. All these features are great to have, but the collection’s biggest issue by far is a lack of online multiplayer. If you have the Switch 2 version, you can at least do online game sharing with friends, but having no means of playing with random people on any platform is an unfortunate decision for a series that’s beloved for its multiplayer offerings.

While not quite as bountiful or keenly polished as the various collections done by M2, Super Bomberman Collection is a solid release by Red Art Games that’s priced reasonably and serves a valuable niche. The games on offer are all high quality and Red Art Games put clear effort into making sure newcomers can easily understand their differences and overall appeal. The Bomberman games have a very poor track record when it comes to mainstream availability in the present day, so we can only hope this is the beginning of a long-term effort to right that wrong.

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