I have a soft spot for NMK. For the classic arcade game enthusiast, they are one of those devs - the small, plucky dev with like 15 people on staff that manages to pump out 3 games a year that are somehow mostly quite good (UPL, Athena, Jaleco, Video System are other examples) - that is always so wonderful to discover the library of. And before the 90s, they're kinda like most of those examples - fun but mostly a curiosity. No one these days is going to play Argus over the other shooters of the time from Konami, Taito and Toaplan because it's legitimately the best on offer.
But with the turn of the 90s, and acquisition of some incredible talent, NMK really started hitting some home runs. Gunnail, P-47 Aces, Super spacefortress Macross 2 are truly top class shooting games to this day, and their magnum opus Thunder Dragon 2 is one of the absolute best in the genre. They are really up there with Taito and Toaplan as the STG kings of the early 90s.
Yet at the same time, they never stopped being NMK. Whilst many of their games look pretty "generic", they almost always contain some ridiculous game design quirk or just... oddball decisions, and it's great. Saint Dragon has you basically play snake and R type at the same time. P-47 Aces has a bizzarely chirpy soundtrack and scoring based on you bouncing inside of enemy hitboxes, and Saboten bombers is Saboten Bombers.
Saboten bombers is quite frankly, unhinged. It is an almost self-parodical take on the snow bros/bubble bobble, fixed screen elimination platformer formula. It really just is snow bros with lots of explosions, ultimately. And that does make it a better game (sorry Toaplan ilu too) - Snow Bros really becomes a very methodical, slow game with tonnes of setup when you actually want to play it well, and whilst Saboten does have it's level of setup at a very high level, it is much more chaotic and way faster paced, and I really think it nails it's balance in terms of having to act fast to beat the time limit, but with enough care to avoid getting caught up in your own, and others explosions.
But chaos alone does not make Saboten so wack. It must be mentioned Saboten is essentially a sister title to 91's truly heinous Hacha Mecha Fighter - one of the most adorable shooting games ever produced which is also extremely hard and unbelievably cursed. I'll spare you the full details but a huge part of scoring in that game involves hugging the right border of the screen. Where enemies spawn from. Without warning.
And somehow, Saboten is even more ridiculous for high level play. You will struggle to find a game that is more random and full of as many insane secrets. You will get a random bunch of points at the end of each stage for no reason. You can hold start for the first two stages after inserting a coin and get multiplier items. You can deliberately die straight up for multiplier items. Item spawns are mostly random. Extends are mostly random. Enemy actions are mostly random. You can freeze your multiplier at 8x after deaths but only the WR holder knows how. Start the game holding P1 jump and P2 bomb (even if P2 isnt playing) to get half a free extend. If you hold jump for a whole stage, you get a free peach. If you ignore one of your extremely rare extends, you get a 9x multiplier, and that isn't even a quarter of it. Of course, outside of an extremely rare handbook NMK made none of this is conveyed to the player remotely. Brilliant.
Watching a high level run of Saboten is about the most ridiculous game experience you'll ever see. Doing absurd snow bros chain setups at the same time as relying on a bunch of luck and doing some random other shit to make things happen, all ocnducted by a silly cactus. The scoring potential is frankly ridiculous too - this game can be counterstopped in it's first loop with a combination of insane luck and skill, yet new players probably won't even touch the top 5 digits on the scale. Stupid-ass game.
And yet is also extremely well made. Perhaps the most obvious thing about Saboten is how utterly pretty its pixel art and particularly the animations are. There was absolutely no need for them to go so hard on the adorable cacti dancing on the name entry screen. There was no need for so many background screens. There was no need to make that enemy cactus to a delinquent pose and smoke whilst standing still. But they do, and Saboten as a result feels utterly alive. Things are constantly moving, even going AFK enemies are probably doing a silly dance or something, and it's just quite joyful. As aforementioned, it's also extremely fast paced by the standards of a fixed screen platformer, and a lot more interesting as a pure survival game imo compared to snow bros, which really only gets interesting for scoring. Saboten's level design is also great, with stages embracing the bouncyness and the AOE of the bombs. Of the Shitpost duology, I definetly think it's the better game than HMF, and i find it a fun game just to embrace the silliness of. Especially if you can wrangle a friend into fightcade and continually bomb them.
Now, for the real plot twist. Whilst actual credits for Saboten Bombers are unknown, as it doesnt have any - based on other NMK games of the time, it is very likely that this game's composer was Kazunori Hideya (HIDE-KAZ). AKA the lead sound engineer on Metal Gear Solid 3. And if it wasnt, it was legendary composer Manabu Namiki. And it's designer/lead? Based on other credits around the time, it is very likely to have been Gunnail head Morio Kishimoto. The current head of Sonic Team and director of Frontiers. That explains a lot, I feel.
Anyway, Saboten owns. It's so stupid.
But with the turn of the 90s, and acquisition of some incredible talent, NMK really started hitting some home runs. Gunnail, P-47 Aces, Super spacefortress Macross 2 are truly top class shooting games to this day, and their magnum opus Thunder Dragon 2 is one of the absolute best in the genre. They are really up there with Taito and Toaplan as the STG kings of the early 90s.
Yet at the same time, they never stopped being NMK. Whilst many of their games look pretty "generic", they almost always contain some ridiculous game design quirk or just... oddball decisions, and it's great. Saint Dragon has you basically play snake and R type at the same time. P-47 Aces has a bizzarely chirpy soundtrack and scoring based on you bouncing inside of enemy hitboxes, and Saboten bombers is Saboten Bombers.
Saboten bombers is quite frankly, unhinged. It is an almost self-parodical take on the snow bros/bubble bobble, fixed screen elimination platformer formula. It really just is snow bros with lots of explosions, ultimately. And that does make it a better game (sorry Toaplan ilu too) - Snow Bros really becomes a very methodical, slow game with tonnes of setup when you actually want to play it well, and whilst Saboten does have it's level of setup at a very high level, it is much more chaotic and way faster paced, and I really think it nails it's balance in terms of having to act fast to beat the time limit, but with enough care to avoid getting caught up in your own, and others explosions.
But chaos alone does not make Saboten so wack. It must be mentioned Saboten is essentially a sister title to 91's truly heinous Hacha Mecha Fighter - one of the most adorable shooting games ever produced which is also extremely hard and unbelievably cursed. I'll spare you the full details but a huge part of scoring in that game involves hugging the right border of the screen. Where enemies spawn from. Without warning.
And somehow, Saboten is even more ridiculous for high level play. You will struggle to find a game that is more random and full of as many insane secrets. You will get a random bunch of points at the end of each stage for no reason. You can hold start for the first two stages after inserting a coin and get multiplier items. You can deliberately die straight up for multiplier items. Item spawns are mostly random. Extends are mostly random. Enemy actions are mostly random. You can freeze your multiplier at 8x after deaths but only the WR holder knows how. Start the game holding P1 jump and P2 bomb (even if P2 isnt playing) to get half a free extend. If you hold jump for a whole stage, you get a free peach. If you ignore one of your extremely rare extends, you get a 9x multiplier, and that isn't even a quarter of it. Of course, outside of an extremely rare handbook NMK made none of this is conveyed to the player remotely. Brilliant.
Watching a high level run of Saboten is about the most ridiculous game experience you'll ever see. Doing absurd snow bros chain setups at the same time as relying on a bunch of luck and doing some random other shit to make things happen, all ocnducted by a silly cactus. The scoring potential is frankly ridiculous too - this game can be counterstopped in it's first loop with a combination of insane luck and skill, yet new players probably won't even touch the top 5 digits on the scale. Stupid-ass game.
And yet is also extremely well made. Perhaps the most obvious thing about Saboten is how utterly pretty its pixel art and particularly the animations are. There was absolutely no need for them to go so hard on the adorable cacti dancing on the name entry screen. There was no need for so many background screens. There was no need to make that enemy cactus to a delinquent pose and smoke whilst standing still. But they do, and Saboten as a result feels utterly alive. Things are constantly moving, even going AFK enemies are probably doing a silly dance or something, and it's just quite joyful. As aforementioned, it's also extremely fast paced by the standards of a fixed screen platformer, and a lot more interesting as a pure survival game imo compared to snow bros, which really only gets interesting for scoring. Saboten's level design is also great, with stages embracing the bouncyness and the AOE of the bombs. Of the Shitpost duology, I definetly think it's the better game than HMF, and i find it a fun game just to embrace the silliness of. Especially if you can wrangle a friend into fightcade and continually bomb them.
Now, for the real plot twist. Whilst actual credits for Saboten Bombers are unknown, as it doesnt have any - based on other NMK games of the time, it is very likely that this game's composer was Kazunori Hideya (HIDE-KAZ). AKA the lead sound engineer on Metal Gear Solid 3. And if it wasnt, it was legendary composer Manabu Namiki. And it's designer/lead? Based on other credits around the time, it is very likely to have been Gunnail head Morio Kishimoto. The current head of Sonic Team and director of Frontiers. That explains a lot, I feel.
Anyway, Saboten owns. It's so stupid.