A Bomberman named Indy Bomber sets out on a long journey to uncover a legendary treasure called the Ring of Wishes. He discovers a scripture and begins reading it, but soon falls into a trap in the floor and ends up in a cave. Now he must find hs way out of the cave and find the Ring of Wishes!
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Bomberman GB delivers classic bomb-laying action in a portable package. True to its roots, you'll strategically blast your way through mazes, defeating enemies and uncovering power-ups to enhance your destructive potential. While it lacks the multiplayer frenzy of its console counterparts, Bomberman GB provides a solid solo experience with a charming retro aesthetic and a surprising amount of challenge in its later stages.
Known very confusingly in English as just “Bomberman GB” (as our Bomberman GB was called Wario Blast: Featuring Bomberman in NA and EU), this was part of the pile of GB games I nabbed for 100 yen a piece at Book Off around the time I picked up my Super GameBoy. I’ve been a fan of Bomberman for a long time, but I’ve never gotten around to trying out his GB games. This seemed like a good a time as any to give it a go~. At 100 yen, even if it was terrible, I’d hardly feel like I wasted my money. It took me around 3 or so hours to beat adventure mode over two sittings. I played the Japanese version on real (Super GameBoy) hardware.
The story of Bomberman GB2 is pretty darn simple, as you’d expect for a Bomberman game. Indy Bomber (who’s dressed exactly as his name suggests: coat, hat, and whip as well) is off searching for a legendary treasure called the Ring of Wishes. He’s getting closer when he suddenly falls into a chasm that opens up beneath him! He’s gotta get out of that cave and continue his search for the legendary treasure. It’s a very one-dimensional story, but that’s all it has to be. This is just Bomberman, after all. No need to reinvent the wheel for it.
The gameplay is pretty standard 2D Bomberman but with a twist here and there. In the each world (sans the last) of the adventure mode, you get to pick either an A mode or B mode upon entering, and that mode will change the objective of the 5 levels you’re about to do slightly. It’s usually just a difference between like, “kill all the enemies while dealing with this trap” vs. “kill all the enemies in a specified order”, but it’s a cool way to vary up the gameplay a bit. It’s a bit of a pain that you can’t know the details of the A or B modes while you’re picking them, but a very cool feature is that on the main screen you have a “Lesson” mode that lets you try out and practice the different modes for each of the 7 worlds before you set out on your quest. Very cool!
Each world’s five levels is followed by a boss fight, and they’re all quite well designed and pretty self explanatory. I was honestly really delighted with how this game’s level and boss design is handled. Compared to its console contemporaries of the time, GB2 has some extremely player-friendly design for when you fail. You have 3 lives, and a game over gives you a 4 digit password to start at the start of that world again, or you can just press start to continue from the level you died at, just with one less fire power and bomb power up each. It’s a system so forgiving it makes me question why even bother putting in the penalty of powering you down with each game over, but it’s a game that I found easy enough in its difficulty that I didn’t mind it at all. Even better, you always have your maximum power level in the final world, so even though the final boss is a real jerk (who took me easily dozens of tries over two sittings), you never have to worry about replaying anything to get powerups back to fight him at your full potential again. The whole thing overall has a really well done difficulty curve for a Bomberman game of the time, and it makes the whole game much more fun as a result.
The presentation is really nice as well! Given that this is 1995, devs knew how to get some pretty beefy sprites and animations out of the GameBoy by then, and they show it. Bomberman and the enemies he fights are delightfully expressive, and the big sprites they use for the cutscenes are super cute too. The color added to those big cutscene pictures via the Super GameBoy is also very cool, and so are the several borders that it provides for you as well (with my personal favorite being the “Bomber Theater” movie theater that it gives you for watching the intro and ending cutscenes). The music is very fun and Bomberman-y too, as you would expect for a Hudsonsoft game. They’re not exactly all-timer great songs, but they fit the action very well and they’re fun to listen to. One last note, speaking of the Super GameBoy, is that not only does this game support multiplayer via link cable on your GameBoy, it actually even supports local multiplayer with only one cart via your Super GameBoy! It can even use the big 5-player Bomberman multi-tap! The power of technology truly is staggering :O
Verdict: Highly Recommended. If you like Bomberman and want something a bit more actually completeable and player-friendly than so many of his retro console games are, then this is right up your alley. It’s honestly one of my new favorites so far as classic single-player Bomberman goes because the more forgiving difficulty just makes it so much more nice to sit down and play with. The local multiplayer feature doesn’t hurt too, of course~. This is a really great Bomberman game to sit down and enjoy, and easily one of the stronger classic experiences with him that Hudson gave us back in their glory days.
The story of Bomberman GB2 is pretty darn simple, as you’d expect for a Bomberman game. Indy Bomber (who’s dressed exactly as his name suggests: coat, hat, and whip as well) is off searching for a legendary treasure called the Ring of Wishes. He’s getting closer when he suddenly falls into a chasm that opens up beneath him! He’s gotta get out of that cave and continue his search for the legendary treasure. It’s a very one-dimensional story, but that’s all it has to be. This is just Bomberman, after all. No need to reinvent the wheel for it.
The gameplay is pretty standard 2D Bomberman but with a twist here and there. In the each world (sans the last) of the adventure mode, you get to pick either an A mode or B mode upon entering, and that mode will change the objective of the 5 levels you’re about to do slightly. It’s usually just a difference between like, “kill all the enemies while dealing with this trap” vs. “kill all the enemies in a specified order”, but it’s a cool way to vary up the gameplay a bit. It’s a bit of a pain that you can’t know the details of the A or B modes while you’re picking them, but a very cool feature is that on the main screen you have a “Lesson” mode that lets you try out and practice the different modes for each of the 7 worlds before you set out on your quest. Very cool!
Each world’s five levels is followed by a boss fight, and they’re all quite well designed and pretty self explanatory. I was honestly really delighted with how this game’s level and boss design is handled. Compared to its console contemporaries of the time, GB2 has some extremely player-friendly design for when you fail. You have 3 lives, and a game over gives you a 4 digit password to start at the start of that world again, or you can just press start to continue from the level you died at, just with one less fire power and bomb power up each. It’s a system so forgiving it makes me question why even bother putting in the penalty of powering you down with each game over, but it’s a game that I found easy enough in its difficulty that I didn’t mind it at all. Even better, you always have your maximum power level in the final world, so even though the final boss is a real jerk (who took me easily dozens of tries over two sittings), you never have to worry about replaying anything to get powerups back to fight him at your full potential again. The whole thing overall has a really well done difficulty curve for a Bomberman game of the time, and it makes the whole game much more fun as a result.
The presentation is really nice as well! Given that this is 1995, devs knew how to get some pretty beefy sprites and animations out of the GameBoy by then, and they show it. Bomberman and the enemies he fights are delightfully expressive, and the big sprites they use for the cutscenes are super cute too. The color added to those big cutscene pictures via the Super GameBoy is also very cool, and so are the several borders that it provides for you as well (with my personal favorite being the “Bomber Theater” movie theater that it gives you for watching the intro and ending cutscenes). The music is very fun and Bomberman-y too, as you would expect for a Hudsonsoft game. They’re not exactly all-timer great songs, but they fit the action very well and they’re fun to listen to. One last note, speaking of the Super GameBoy, is that not only does this game support multiplayer via link cable on your GameBoy, it actually even supports local multiplayer with only one cart via your Super GameBoy! It can even use the big 5-player Bomberman multi-tap! The power of technology truly is staggering :O
Verdict: Highly Recommended. If you like Bomberman and want something a bit more actually completeable and player-friendly than so many of his retro console games are, then this is right up your alley. It’s honestly one of my new favorites so far as classic single-player Bomberman goes because the more forgiving difficulty just makes it so much more nice to sit down and play with. The local multiplayer feature doesn’t hurt too, of course~. This is a really great Bomberman game to sit down and enjoy, and easily one of the stronger classic experiences with him that Hudson gave us back in their glory days.
bomberman! on the gameboy!
Quería jugarme un Bomberman más y termine pasándome el Ys 1 de nuevo.
Who knew Bomberman was a Harrison Ford fan?
The sequel to Wario Blast- I mean Bomberman GB 1 in Japan and it's easy to tell due to the reoccurring upgrade system which is the only good idea this subfranchise of Bomberman has ever done right.
The game has the usual world with stages and you need to kill all enemies to get to the exit and so on, but we have a somewhat interesting twist here that relies on puzzle stages and the idea is pretty decent! But the execution is really, really bad with how the stages are designed, they feel like mazes like something you'd see in a Pacman spinoff rather than a functional classic Bomberman stage. The stage gimmicks start at the first stage of each world where they ask you to pick one out of two paths, each of them containing a set of exclusive stages with a different gimmick from one other. For example, the first path is whether you'd like to kill all enemies with a strict time limit for the entire 5 stages of the world or take the other path where you have much more time but you have to kill them in a certain order, as I've previously said the idea is interesting and kinda puts a spin to the Bomberman gameplay we are so used to by 1995, but it's still boring! The later world just forces us to do too many switch puzzles and whatnot making the game a slog to go through! I really wanted the game to end but the stages take so long to beat it's not fun.
And the boss fight, dear god they suck like we all know it's a series staple by now, all Bomberman games have terrible boss fights but this one uses the last world as a boss rush and it's so annoying!
But hey, unlike the first Bomberman GB game this one has multiplayer with the link cable and stuff making it somewhat worth it if you want a Bomberman experience on the go!
Man, we really came to a point where something we expect out of a Bomberman game becomes a selling point you know it sucks.
The sequel to Wario Blast- I mean Bomberman GB 1 in Japan and it's easy to tell due to the reoccurring upgrade system which is the only good idea this subfranchise of Bomberman has ever done right.
The game has the usual world with stages and you need to kill all enemies to get to the exit and so on, but we have a somewhat interesting twist here that relies on puzzle stages and the idea is pretty decent! But the execution is really, really bad with how the stages are designed, they feel like mazes like something you'd see in a Pacman spinoff rather than a functional classic Bomberman stage. The stage gimmicks start at the first stage of each world where they ask you to pick one out of two paths, each of them containing a set of exclusive stages with a different gimmick from one other. For example, the first path is whether you'd like to kill all enemies with a strict time limit for the entire 5 stages of the world or take the other path where you have much more time but you have to kill them in a certain order, as I've previously said the idea is interesting and kinda puts a spin to the Bomberman gameplay we are so used to by 1995, but it's still boring! The later world just forces us to do too many switch puzzles and whatnot making the game a slog to go through! I really wanted the game to end but the stages take so long to beat it's not fun.
And the boss fight, dear god they suck like we all know it's a series staple by now, all Bomberman games have terrible boss fights but this one uses the last world as a boss rush and it's so annoying!
But hey, unlike the first Bomberman GB game this one has multiplayer with the link cable and stuff making it somewhat worth it if you want a Bomberman experience on the go!
Man, we really came to a point where something we expect out of a Bomberman game becomes a selling point you know it sucks.
This game desperately tries to make itself interesting despite the gb's limitations by incorporating puzzle elements, but instead of making the game better, it somehow makes it much worse. I'd honestly play the original NES game instead.