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What have I got for you today?
Why, it's Super Bomberman!
... no, not the one on the SNES. That one was actually half-decent.
This is Super Bomberman on the mobile phone, presented by Living Mobile and released in December 2003, I believe.
This is one of the few Bomberman mobile phone games to see release outside Japan...
... and since scrounging up second-hand information is all I can muster for most mobile titles, this'll be a nice change!
I've dinked about with the game briefly before, but this'll be my first sit-down-and-play session.
So I really have no idea what to expect, outside of what that Help text told us.
There's gonna be 30 stages and some obnoxious MIDIs, but everything else will be a genuine surprise!
(it really won't)
The game is patterned after the NES game, to nobody's surprise.
Lay bombs, blow enemies, find the door hidden in a soft block, and there's only item to be found per stage.
No, it doesn't spawn enemies when you bomb doors.
That might actually have been interesting.
...
I don't think there's a lot I can say about a mobile phone game.
It's gonna be a boring half hour, folks!
So, mobile phone games, eh?
They're funny ol' things!
One of my aims for the Shrine Place is to gather information on each and every Bomberman game for mobile phones...
... which is a tough task, let me tell ya.
Some are absent from Hudson's official site, most are on obsolete operating systems...
... and of course, there's no chance of anyone outside Japan actually playing them.
No big loss, for the most part. I mean, if THIS is anything to go by...
But there are some intriguing ones to be found.
Like, you wouldn't believe the crossovers Bomberman has been thrown into.
Tatsunoko's Yatterman? They team up with Bomberman.
Hudson's R20 Moe series of board games meets *** schoolgirls? They get a Bomberman crossover.
Kewpie dolls, those weird baby-face doll ornaments? Bomberman crossover.
(I swear to god, look it up)
Gachapin, that obtuse Japanese mascot? That one's a doozy.
Not only did it get THREE Bomberman crossovers...
... but the story was SO GRANDIOSE that Gachapin and Bomberman had to join forces...
... BY MERGING THEIR BODIES INTO ONE GESTALT BEING.
"Gachabom", you call it.
What was the cause?
Gacha's pal Mukku got lost.
Yeah.
Mukku also got in on the fusion dance gig and got a "Mukkubom" form in the second game.
What's funny about these crossovers is that most of them are exactly the same game.
Check out screenshots for some of them, and you'll see that the levels are exactly the same, bar the graphics.
Hudson, you cards.
Speaking about the game for once...
It doesn't control very well.
That Speed Up I got is very nearly a death trap.
It's difficult enough using the weird key arrangement, but all movement is in a dodgy incremental manner.
You go fast enough by default, any faster feels like you're losing what little control you've got over Bomberman.
Now I've got a remote bomb!
... and now have another button to worry about using!
The bomb key is located between every single direction key...
... so every time I move down, I'm worried I might lay a bomb and blow myself up.
It's pretty nerve-wracking.
...
You see what I mean?
YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN
On the bright side, I no longer have to worry about that bloody remote control.
Here the praftalls of that dodgy incremental movement comes into play.
Ooh! Right in the kisser!
Trapping enemies like that is a simple yet essential tactic in the Bomberman games...
... but wonky collision detection and spotty movement put a real damper on that.
Speaking of controls, I wanted to play this using a gamepad, like I did with Saturn Bomberman...
... but the emulator, KEmulator, doesn't play well with gamepads.
I'd assigned the keys, but every input did something I didn't want to. Like laying bombs when I wanted to move left.
So I played the whole thing on the Numpad.
Which is about as close you can get to an accurate mobile gaming experience, really.
What's KEmulator like?
... well, there's not a lot of options for mobile emulator, as far as I know.
It does the job, I suppose. Some spotty emulation in some games, prone to crashing if you look at it funny...
... but it's either this, or playing it on a real mobile phone.
Emulating modern phone games seems much more accurate, judging from my dabbling with Android game emulation.
Mind you, that has its own share of problems.
Simulating multiple finger probing a screen with only one mouse cursor, for starters!
My time playing the Japan-exclusive iOS title 100 Man Battle Bomberman was cut short by it demanding I sign up to some obtuse Japanese gaming network of sorts...
... though that's hardly the emulator's fault.
What's 100 Man Battle Bomberman like? Well, it's a game where you fight ninety nine other Bombermen at once.
Don't worry, it's incredibly disappointing.
The hundred-man battles have very few items, very few blocks, and very little intelligence to go around.
It doesn't even task you with defeating all foes - just survive long enough for an exit to appear.
It's a social RPG, and it's packed full of features, like costumes, recruitable allies, item upgrades...
... but the whole thing is such a grind. You win heaps of trinkets after every victory, but there's no real value or reward to them.
If you've seen gameplay footage of it, you'll probably have seen a rather bouncy girl on the menu screen.
She's called Windy!
I hate to be openly perverted, but she's the only part of the game worth playing for.
Decent elements, but unsatisfying execution.
The Bomb Kick!
You'd believe a simple item like this couldn't possibly cause issues on a wonky control setup...
... but it gives me tons of grief later on.
So, one thing I should probably start commenting on...
Why are the enemies so wackily coloured?
I mean, red and yellow striped Balloms? White Minvos?
What is this, the Bomberman Jetters colouring book?!
(there are no balloms or minvos in the bomberman jetters colouring book, btw)
(but there is an official colouring book, look it up)
Also, crud, I just destroyed a Wall Pass.
That could have made this playthrough so less painful.
I actually recorded this as four separate videos, and broke the recording every ten stages.
Partly to make sure the whole video wasn't lost should Camtasia foul up...
... but also because I wasn't sure how I'd be uploading this.
Choosing between three parts or an uninterrupted half-hour wasn't an easy decision.
I know very few folks are going to watch this, but either option sounds like torture!
Guess I should mention that I tried the sound effect option for a while.
Very unimpressive. No bomb sound effects?! Come on!
Fun fact: I played this this at like two in the morning.
(or two at night, however time works)
I'd gone to bed early but spent hours lying restlessly, and I knew I had to get up and do something.
So I thought, there's absolutely nothing productive I can do in this state of mind.
Let's play Super Bomberman.
It worked out pretty well, actually.
Normally if I'm doing something, I'm always thinking, "man, I could be something fifty times more productive than this."
And thus nothing is ever accomplished.
But at half two in the morning when you want nothing more than to go to sleep, what better activity can you do than play crummy mobile phone games?
I'd actually planned to do voiceover commentary, and had prepared some basic notes on guff to talk about...
... but it was too much hassle, especially at that time of night.
Plus my voice wasn't up to it. I don't think I have a compelling speaking voice at any time of day.
Sorry to disappoint, that one guy who suggested I do audio commentary!
I do admit I'm quite partial to some Let's Players, not because of their choice of games or their playing skills...
... but simply because they're very enjoyable to listen to.
If I'm gonna plug, I'd have to say I dig Frankomatic's work.
I'd say he's rather low-key. The games he plays aren't exactly flashy, nor does he try to force his persona down your throat...
... but he's just a good, entertaining and relaxing watch.
He and Cess have a great repartee going on.
Check him out.
I don't think commentating over games is my bag.
If -I- can't stand listening to myself yap for half an hour, I don't see how anyone else could.
Wall Pass!
GIVE ME POWER~
I just wanna say, I do appreciate the game's graphics.
For a totey little mobile game, they're not bad. Bomberman looks suitably Bomberman-like.
The enemies not so much.
I particularly appreciate the backdrops. I dig how there's a new decor after every stage.
And the themes aren't half bad. There's more character to them than plain old "lava world", "ice world" and so forth.
You've got a Japanese house filled with Daruma...
... a man-sized chess board...
... a game of draughts played on a cosmic board playing through space and time...
It's a damn sight better than seeing the old green and greys all the time.
The only problem I have with it is that it can be hard to adjust to the new colours after every stage.
Like, one stage will be all white, then the next will be dark blues and blacks. Just a bit jarring.
And when enemies that can pass through walls are located almost right next to you...
... you don't want to waste time eyeing out the playing field.
Like, take this. The last stage was rather neutral greens and browns.
Now it's eye popping pinks, creams and toffees.
It's not a huge deal, but I'm a stickler for clarity.
So I'm still playing this, it seems.
I've seen versions of this game floating around called "Bomberman Deluxe"...
... with upscaled graphics at twice the size.
It doesn't play well with emulation, and although it has the Living Mobile credit at the start, I'm not sure if it's an official release or not.
There is a video of someone actually playing it on their phone, but that doesn't answer much.
It's also spectacularly ugly.
Like, jeez, I've seen some crummy Bomberman sprites in my time, but its one takes the cake.
He's like a stack of sponges held together by pipe cleaners.
If you're looking to download these old mobile Bomberman games, dodgy download sites seem to be he only option I know of.
There's a lot of unlicensed games floating around as well, often mistaken for the real deal.
For instance, there's an official "Bomberman 3D" by Hudson (Japan only, of course)...
... but there's also an unofficial "Bomberman 3D", plus a totally different "Bomberman 3D Atomic"!
They appear to be Chinese knockoffs, and they both use graphics from Bomberman World on PlayStation, funnily enough.
What's particularly amusing is that I've a feeling they got the graphics from my old sprite rips.
The jokes' on them - those sprites rips were terrible!
Going back to the topic of clarity...
Really, guys?
White enemies on a white backdrop?
With no outline?
I can't be the only one bothered by things like this.
Wahey! An fireproof vest!
... and the control scheme is too slow to let me firewalk.
And it lasts for barely any time. Marvellous.
As fun as it is to tease players, they could've implemented a Heart item and gotten the same basic effect.
Gah!
I pressed the magnify window key by mistake.
I told you working with the Numpad was a nightmare.
There's only ten more stages to go. Thanks for hanging in there.
Another video break.
Oh no!
I can't rant enough about the control scheme, can I?
Oh, now that's just unfair.
What amuses me about this game is that it's one of the few Bomberman titles...
... that is actually easier to play with the LESS items you pick up.
I mean, you'd have less bombs to worry about, a smaller blast radius that won't unexpectedly fry you...
... about as manageable a speed you can hope for, and your bombs won't move on their own.
ARGUABLY some games do have the "more items = bad" trait...
Foes might target you in battle mode to cannibalise your power-ups.
And some of the later games (such as Bomberman DS) had power-downs that'd lower your item stock.
Which I always thought was just plain nasty.
Besides, isn't it more fun when the player works out for themselves how unpleasant an item can be?
I don't actually need this Fire Up...
... but at this point, I might as well get it as a personal challenge. How unwieldy can my bombs get?
Besides the crossover titles, there's one or two mobile Bomberman games that look kind of intriguing.
There's two titles called "Bomberman NEXT", set in local regions of Japan.
They have the usual premise - blow up enemies to open the exit, yadda yadda.
But they're designed around score runs. You collect items to get bonuses and score multipliers...
... and the game is intentionally short, to emphasise playing over and over to perfect your score run.
Getting hit doesn't kill you, but cuts time from the clock and loses your collected items.
It sounds like a really cool remix on the usual gameplay... so naturally it'll only be tried once and never again.
(as far as I know, anyway!)
Good grief! Pontans!
We've only three stages left, and only NOW they start showing up? How bizarre.
In other games if time runs out, about a dozen of them are spawned to terrorise you...
... but in this game a time-up just kills you. Boring.
Oh god, this Bomb Kick is driving me insane.
It kicks when I don't want it to!
Even when it looks like I'm standing on it, I might kick it if I walk forward.
I warned you about the incremental stepping, didn't I?!
The other intriguing mobile game is Bomberman RPG.
It's exactly what it sounds like: Bomberman in traditional RPG trappings. Dungeons, towns, equipment, and so forth.
There's not a lot of info on it, though. At least, I haven't gathered much info yet.
I think Bomberman Kart DX on the PS2 has some kind of RPG mode...
... but I've yet to play it. Apparently Bagura shows up in it!
This Bomb Kick is tryin' to kill me!
You're meant to be a power-up, man!
I DID IIIIITTTTT
Oh man, I wonder what kind of ending awaits me?
That's just what I expected.
Well, that's Super Bomberman!
For mobile phone, at least.
I sincerely hope it didn't bore anyone to death. Trust me, it's not much better when you're actually playing it.
Thanks for sticking all the way through. I'm just surprised I had enough crap to waffle about for even half the video.
There's one or two other mobile titles I might want to play, but, eh, I'll see what happens.
I've just about exhausted everything worth talking about Bomberman mobile games.
I'm done!
Don't play this game. Spend the time gardening or something.
Later!