Super Bomberman R

Seven years after the last console game and five years after the buyout of Hudson Soft by Konami, Super Bomberman R arrived with the same mantle as its decades-old predecessors. Between the troubling news coming out of Konami during the 2010s and their neglect of many of Hudson Soft’s IPs, it was hard to say what exactly the company had in mind for the illustrious franchise’s return prior to release. In order to make Bomberman fresh again, they (alongside developer Hexadrive) decided to give the series a cartoonish, comic book-esque facelift courtesy of Puyo Puyo Fever character designer Hideyuki Takanami and rebooted the storyline as well. The timing of this reboot was quite fortunate as it got a big boost by being a launch title for the Nintendo Switch in 2017, granting it some of the best sales numbers in franchise history. Super Bomberman R is a competent enough entry in the series that’s an acceptable starting point for newcomers, but it’s one that doesn’t feel as ambitious as many longtime fans would have liked and falters in places older entries delivered.

The eight Bomberman Brothers are the guardians of peace and protect the galaxy from danger. As the leader, White takes his job very seriously to the point of wanting to train every day, but the other Bombers have a real problem taking any initiative. Black is a bluffing blowhard who’s weird around women, Red is a hothead who doesn’t listen to reason, Green is a manipulative child who tries to get others to do his bidding, Blue does nothing but sleep despite having excellent computer skills, Yellow loves butterflies and has a non-existent attention span, and Pink and Aqua would rather talk fashion than partake in violence (until Aqua gets mad, anyway). A typical day is interrupted by the return of Bagura (called Buggler here), who has resurrected the Five Dastardly Bombers to wage war on the galaxy.

Magnet Bomber and Plasma Bomber are basically the same as their Super Bomberman 2 incarnations, but Golem Bomber has ditched his previous stylings for a much larger body, Brain Bomber is now Phantom Bomber, and Pretty Bomber’s role has been expanded upon the most. As a result of reprogramming, she’s now Karaoke Bomber, but she’s also the long lost ninth member of the Bomberman Brothers, serving as the only attempt at a twist in the game’s narrative. In November 2017, a free post-game chapter was added that covers a brief story involving Balloms, the balloon enemies, being repurposed as pets for society, only for them to go berserk and leave the Bombers with a mess to clean up. It’s a simple storyline that isn’t terribly relevant to the overarching narrative, but it at least adds nine new levels and a boss to check out.

Voiced cutscenes in each world give the story an injection of life that may not be to everyone’s taste, but the character designs really shine during them with expressive animations. The plot doesn’t take itself too seriously and leans heavily into the personalities of the Bombers to try and provoke laughs. This ends up backfiring more often than not as it undercuts any attempt the game makes to deepen its plot in exchange for repetitive jokes. White is effectively a babysitter in over his head and the other characters are disinterested in moving the plot along. Towards the end, there’s the implication that Buggler continues to exist and return because of the inherent darkness present in humanity, but the game never explores this idea nor do its characters bother to acknowledge it. Efforts to give the Bomberman series more storytelling are always appreciated, but what’s on offer here doesn’t live up to past entries like The Second Attack that did so in more ambitious and interesting ways.

Despite its modernity, Super Bomberman R feels surprisingly old school in its mechanics. It continues what the SNES games started, but has fewer items to work with and no mounts as well. Enemy variety is quite limited, relying on lots of palette swapped HigeHige bots, which is especially strange due to Mujoe’s absence. The structure is as traditional as it gets, with each of the five main worlds being a linear sequence of eight levels capped off with boss fights against the Dastardly Bombers and their mechs. The proceedings are at least spiced up with varying objectives, ranging from “defeat all enemies” to pressing switches or surviving against infinite waves of enemies for a period of time. Boss fights this time around are more elaborate in that the mechs are significantly larger and require hits at specific opportunities to stun them and create an opening to inflict actual damage afterwards. Unfortunately, because of their high health totals, they can become tedious timesinks to deal with. Golem Bomber’s fire breathing turtle mech is so big that the player will be completely obscured whenever they’re behind it and Plasma Bomber’s mech based on Quinbee will take its sweet time before using the one punching move that leaves it vulnerable. Karaoke Bomber’s mech is one of the most unenjoyable bosses in the entire series, requiring you to deal with an icy arena, wait for a very narrow opportunity to deal damage, and dodge attacks that have massive but unclear hitboxes.

If there’s one place where Super Bomberman R feels modern, it’s in its presentation. Its graphics aren’t cutting edge, but they do a good job of providing slick environments with more complexity than your average Bomberman maze. The mazes are often notably larger than in past games and some levels have multiple elevations to walk on or partially destructible environments that make finding the exit an interesting navigational challenge. Where things become problematic is with how zoomed out everything is; sometimes, it’s difficult to parse destructible objects and the lack of transparency on certain elements means that it’s common to find situations where you or your enemies are obscured. The game also defaults to an awkward diagonal view of the battlefield, and while this can be changed, there’s no way to zoom into or out of the action and keep everything cleanly on screen, so it never feels comfortable to look at.

The expected multiplayer options like map gimmicks and team battles were present at launch, but many previously available options like item customization and 10 player battles were excised. A host of additional maps, cosmetics, and characters are available to buy with Bomber Coins, but earning them through the story or repeated multiplayer sessions takes long enough that you’ll have to spend hours grinding to get it all. The online playerbase is long gone at this point, too, so there’s little incentive if you don’t have a friend group to play with. If you’re willing to put in the time, there are plenty of characters to unlock from various Konami franchises and it’s fun to see their interpretations here, though it is unfortunate that only one additional character is from previous Bomberman games.

The characters run the gamut from obvious picks like Simon Belmont, Pyramid Head, and Naked Snake to characters more popular in Japan like Shiori Fujisaki and Goemon, to deep cut picks like Princess Tomato and Upa. They even made a deal with WWE wrestler Xavier Woods to put him in the game as a Bomber! When Super Bomberman R was re-released as the “Shiny Edition” on PS4, Xbox One, and Steam, each version got its share of unique characters. PS4 players got Ratchet & Clank, cat mascot Toro and an Ape Escape monkey, Xbox One got Master Chief, Arbiter, and a Grunt from the Halo series, and Steam got Atlas and P-body from Portal 2. Switch players weren’t left out to dry, thankfully, and were given Max and a Bomber based on the Caesar ship from Star Soldier. The Switch also got Octopus Bomber, a character referencing Parodius, but they were exclusive to Japanese copies of the game and required a code from the official Super Bomberman R soundtrack to unlock (said code also had an expiration date), so a lot of the Switch userbase was ultimately denied the character.

The multiplayer was later expanded upon with the addition of Grand Prix mode, which focuses on team battles with varying objectives. These objectives include collecting more crystals than the other team, a King of the Hill equivalent, a capture the flag mode where the flags are Balloms to escort, and a standard battle with limited lives. All Grand Prix matches consist of at least two 3-minute games and players get unlimited lives in all modes except Basic Battle. To complement the longer rounds, each character is given different starting stats and limitations for the power-ups they can use. For example, White starts off as weak as possible but can potentially max out everything and become the biggest threat, whereas Green starts with Bomb Glove and Bomb Kick, but can’t raise his stats at all, making him outclassed as the round goes on. The Konami characters all have special abilities they can take advantage of as well, such as Simon’s ability to stun enemies with his whip or Pyramid Head’s ability to instantly kill Bombers by slowly walking into them. These abilities all have a cooldown and these characters usually have significant stat limitations, so they don’t feel overpowered. Character choice being as dynamic as it is gives Grand Prix mode a layer of strategy not seen in previous games, though the lengthiness of matches in the mode can make it lose its luster. These concepts are carried over into future R games, with Super Bomberman R Online making particularly great use of them due to its higher stakes Battle Royale nature.

Super Bomberman R is a modest start for what should have been a big comeback. Almost everything it does is acceptable, but it never aspires to surprise nor does it evolve the formula beyond what has been available for decades. If you enjoy the core Bomberman gameplay, you’ll still have fun, but if you prefer the more ambitious genre shifts like Bomberman Hero and Bomberman Quest, you won’t find much to latch on here. This game could have served as a strong foundation for future games to really go wild with and reintroduce beloved elements like larger campaigns and Charabombs, but from here, Konami would instead lead the R series towards a recipe for gentle iteration, opting to change as little as possible even when the time for a proper sequel would roll around.

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