Neo Bomberman

In between Bomberman’s farewell to the Super Famicom and his impending years-long journey on the fifth generation of consoles, he found the time to make one last stop at the arcades with Neo Bomberman. Well, one last stop until much, much later in the franchise’s life and in a nearly unrecognizable form, anyway. This time around, the torch was passed to the ever-reliable developer Produce for them to utilize their experience with some of the Super Bomberman games and bring a comparable, safer take on the franchise to the arcades. It’s not quite an exclusively Produce effort, though, as Now Production is credited for sound effects and music composition, three art designers on the development team (Shin Sasaki, Ishikawa Mutsumi and Ishihara Masumi) were from ADS, and Hudson Soft’s Shigeki Fujiwara was a supervisor on the game as well. While not as offbeat or experimental as the Irem games, Neo Bomberman takes all the right cues from Super Bomberman 4, which manifests into a familiar but overall solid experience.

Since this game is standaloneand not connected to past adventures, Bagura is once again back and in his regular body to boot. For this game, his plan involves crashing the Bomberman tournament that has everyone gathering in one place. After ruining the fun, Bagura kidnaps and imprisons several of the Bombers, leaving White and Black Bomberman to clean up his mess. Like always, Bagura is accompanied by a new villainous Bomber, this time being Atomic Bomber (no relation to the game Atomic Bomberman). There’s nothing inherently wrong with the premise, but it is a bit unfortunate that all of the new Bombers created for this game are only playable in the Battle mode since they could definitely add some variety to the campaign with their abilities. If one doesn’t partake in both modes, they’ll miss out on taking control of some fun and curious character designs like the all-blue and creepy looking Rubber Bomber and Fake Bomber and his protruding goggles. In a sense, it works out in that it encourages you to try both modes; separately, they’re fine enough experiences, but together, they give Neo Bomberman a unique hook when compared to the past few entries.

Just about everything from Super Bomberman 4 returns here. The game looks like Super Bomberman 4, it uses the same egg system instead of using Louies or Tirras, co-op play returns, and it even brings back the caged bombers to rescue in some stages as well. The only omission from SB4 within the main game is the bonus stages, which isn’t a big loss, especially to those flying solo. The monsters included in the eggs are all new and more gimmicky in nature, including the likes of Torisan, a blue bird that launches your bombs to a completely random spot on the map, Dachon, an owl that makes you move so fast it can feel like a liability, and Ombu, an ugly little fellow that slows your movement speed down to an absolute crawl. The monsters aren’t as useful as they were in SB4, but the game at least offers additional exclusive monsters in battle mode that can turn the tables with abilities that include eliminating soft blocks and giving other players a Skull effect at random.

Neo Bomberman offers completely new environments and enemies compared to Super Bomberman 4 that justify its place as a distinct entry. The first world uses a carnival theme similar to Saturn Bomberman‘s first area. World two takes the underwater theming of Bomberman’94‘s third area to the next level by restricting the use of certain power-ups while you’re underwater. Additionally, it also introduces soft blocks that cause chain reactions when they blow up. The bosses are a particularly interesting batch that combines amusing oddities like a big guy with a hula hoop with legitimately fascinating ideas like a pair of fish that can only be hurt once they land on the ground and flop around. The default difficulty has been severely toned down compared to New Atomic Punk, making a 1CC very reasonable to achieve.

Battle mode is perhaps Neo Bomberman‘s biggest twist on the formula and most compelling addition. This mode features an impressive 12 characters to play as, all of which have special abilities (except the Bombermen, as always). While this particular aspect isn’t new to this game, the abilities are generally much less restrictive and more varied in potential applications when compared to Super Bomberman 4. For example, Rubber Bomber can use its ability at any time to turn into slime and move through soft blocks, granting it an immediate mobility advantage. Cat Bomber can charge up a dash attack that moves them around the map at random and stuns anyone it makes contact with. Fake Bomber can turn into a soft block to hide from other players and Hayate Bomber can deploy fake bombs at will to intimidate opponents and exploit their mistakes. Honey and Kotetsu return as playable characters and have interesting powers of their own; the former can turn her placed bombs into heart bombs that move around erratically and the latter can teleport to a random spot on the screen, making him very difficult to pin down. While these abilities make Neo Bomberman a debatably less balanced game – the Champion mode from Super Bomberman 4 is conspicuously absent – they make its battle mode all the more entertaining and give it something unique that makes it worth choosing as a potential option in the face of the stiff competition of the other Bomberman games.

Though Champion mode is absent, Battle mode does use a similar means of progression if you’re playing against the AI, all the while taking a page from the first Bomberman GB. Battle mode initially pits you against a lone AI that you need to win two rounds against. As you continue to win, you’ll be moved to different arenas and more AI opponents will be added to the pile, slowly ratcheting up the difficulty and the chaos alike. Win in all four arenas and you receive a different ending compared to the main game. Strangely, the two player mode only allows you to fight against each other and AI opponents aren’t added to the fold. The arenas in the battle mode only use familiar tricks like teleporters and bomb redirection panels, but their aesthetics are unique compared to anything used in the main game, providing a little extra incentive to check them out.

Neo Bomberman isn’t a particularly notable entry in the grand scheme of the series, but it’s still a solid enough game to be worth playing if the Bomberman formula is something you enjoy. It’s not quite worthy of being an honorarySuper Bomberman 6 despite the team behind it; it’s more like a “Super Bomberman 4.5”, offering a mostly similar experience with a handful of unique additions. Though it is less daring and ambitious when compared to Irem’s takes, it uses its familiarity to reel things back and create a more traditionalexperience those interested in Bomberman were more likely to be seeking at in a casual arcade setting. The visuals are in line with the beloved Super Bomberman 2, the speed has been adjusted to be more reasonable, and the difficulty adjustments allow for the kind of chill, casual experience that the series is generally more known for. For those deep in the Bomberman trenches, it mighthit too close to home to leave a lasting impression, but in the face of the game to come next, having something simple and familiar to come back to as an anchor of sorts, unintentionally or not, was probably the right call.

Links

https://randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com/bomb/arc-neo/misc.html#unused – A host of unused materials found within the game from The Totally Bombastic Bomberman Shrine Place

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