Bomberman / Othello / RoboWarrior retrospective: Boomed to obscurity | NES Works
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ต.ค. 2024
- A lot of shenanigans happening with the NES timeline here at the end of 1988, a situation that I'll explore more next episode. For now, it's worth noting that this episode brings us:
1. Two games that may or may not have actually debuted in the U.S. in December 1988, and
2. Two games from the same franchise, possibly released simultaneously by different publishers.
Bomberman and RoboWarrior don't share much branding in common in the West, but both hail from the same germ of inspiration. RoboWarrior, AKA Bomber King, would branch off briefly to become its own thing under the auspices of developer Aicom, who kind of Hudsoned Hudson here by creating a variant of that company's franchise and then claiming it as their own. Sort of. Except that outside of Japan it was reskinned into someone else's thing. It's complicated.
Othello, however, is not complicated. This is the fourth time this channel has looked at an Othello game. You know the drill.
Production note: NES footage captured from @analogueinc Mini. Arcade footage captured from MiSTer FPGA cores; special thanks to @MiSTerAddons. Video upscaled to 720 with XRGB Mini Framemeister.
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*grizzled detective in a dark room, takes a long drag off his cigarette*
"Of course it was you. It always comes back to you, doesn't it"
*camera switchs to the reverse shot with a Game Boy cartridge of Heiyankyo Alien propped up on a wooden table*
*cart falls forward*
@@josheldridge8546 Onto the floor, where a bemused dog looks at it.
We always called Lode Runner "Bomberman 2" because of Bomberman's NES ending.
The lore sure was weird back then!
A friend and I used a Game Genie to beat Bomberman circa 1993. We were perplexed by the vague ending message and, after turning it over in our 8-year-old heads for a few minutes, decided that it must mean there was a sequel about Human Bomberman that we hadn't encountered yet.
When I reached that ending, I thought Bomberman had turned into Milon from Milon's Secret Castle! I mean, they've got the same color scheme, and the American version wasn't explicit about his identity...
That surprise cameo by MegaMan Volnutt and Tron Bonne was good for a laugh.
I remember getting a used copy of Heiankyo Alien for my gameboy from a local shop when I was a kid. It had "alien" in the title, and that was enough for me to snap it up at the time.
Unfortunately, since it didn't include the instruction booklet, I hadn't the faintest idea what I was supposed to be doing. I had no idea that the circles I could create were supposed to be pits, and I never discovered that they could be filled in.
That being the case, Heiankyo Alien remained one of my most hated games of all time, until I discovered what it actually was and how it was supposed to be played, when I was 42 :p
Bomberman Othello?
Certainly an interesting variation of the Shakespeare play.
I mean, given how the franchise has treated the awkwardly named "Black Bomber", I'd actually watch that.
Still better than when Micronics adapted the classic Greek play The Eumenides as Athena
From the same folks who brought us “The Taming of the Screw Attack”, “MacVentureBeth” , and the almighty “A Tale of Two City Connections”
@@Fear2Stop I remember having to study The Comedy of I Am Errors, Twelfth Meta Knight, and Power Glove’s Labour’s Lost at school.
@@Fear2Stop I keep trying to come up with more, but the best I can do is "The Two Gentlemen of Galaga"...
Finally, the NES gets a port of Eric and the Floaters!
Legit disappointed that Our Narrator failed to mention this absurd title.
Honestly, I completely forgot about it, not being British and all.
@@JeremyParish's greatest weakness: not being British
Yes, but it gives me a +15 innate resistance to being afflicted with transphobia.
@@jonothanthrace1530 We may need a dedicated Spectrum analyzer for that.
An 18 minute video about Bomberman. My cup runneth over. :) It's honestly kind of interesting to go back and look at old game magazines and see which forgotten games they got excited about, and which historically important ones they didn't think were worth covering.
Great video, thank you for making this.
Dunno if you got the 72-hour story coming from that guidebook from my long video, but I can say that the interview in the guidebook has been translated and posted online, and it doesn't mention the 72-hour story. I thought it did because Bomberpedia sourced it from the guidebook, but it has since been updated and corrected. So as of now, the earliest known mention of the 72-hour story actually comes from a journalist named Hisakazu Hirabayashi, who posted about it in 2011 on his blog around the time of the Konami acquisition of Hudson, and also in that Kotaku article.
As for Bomberman NA'S release date... yep, it's a conundrum For what it's worth, the game itself and the back of the box say 1987, and an archive of Hudson Entertainment's website also states Bomberman debuted in North America in 1987, but there are a gazillion other sources saying other stuff so yeah nobody knows.
2:12 - "According to Bomberpedia, who would probably know..." 😂
Bomberman is so much fun. It's rare to see a gap that large between Japanese and North American releases though. Kind of similar to Dragon Quest/Warrior. I'm really excited to try the second Bomberman eventually for the 2-player.
Master Takahashi... I kneel...
13:28 - I don't really love high-stress adventures. It's part of what initially turned me off to Majora's Mask. I love difficult adventures, but I want to go at my own pace, you know?
One can only imagine the reception NES Bomberman would have had if they had kept the original localized English title, "Eric and the Floaters".
"Bomberman? Nah, cute little character? No, what we need is a WEIRDO" - Stuart Ashen on "Eric and the Floaters".
Robowarrior, and the bloody unlit sections, were the bane of my childhood! The music slaps, though!
From what I've read in places, the Famicom version of Bomberman was developed in only 48 hours.
Talk about a game jam but not for fun.
Well it turned out a lot better than Hong Kong 97, which was also made in 48 hours.
Online sources claim Bomberman was coded for Famicom in 72 hours. As they say, what a difference a day makes.
But, Hello You
@@JeremyParish Not exactly Duke Nukem Forever then :P (Well Beyond Good and Evil 2 nowadays )
My favorite channel on TH-cam
So happy to see you cover Robowarrior! I never see it mentioned. I loved that game. Or well, I wanted to love it, but I never got very far. I think the furthest I got was to a boss of some kind, once.
Amazing music and concept though. If only it had been a bit easier...
Out of everything in this video, the game that I was addicted to as a kid was Othello. Probably because unlike real-world Othello games with my friends, I could actually win a match now & then.
I too was introduced to Bomberman at the 16-bit generation games, and so Bomberman has 'always' been a funky dude in white helmet riding kangaroos. Going back to play the NES game on emulation was just too paltry, but learning the rabbit hole goes even deeper with even older games has me intrigued...
I was introduced by Bomberman 64 but soon tried all the Game Boy games on emulation, since those have just a little more variety to them than the earliest console games.
For any would be Robo Warrior players out there it might help to know that the entrances and exits of the caves are always on the same horizontal line. Keep that in mind especially if you run out of candles.
Yes, also: Those E Shield items are Full Health restores and are found everywhere.
@@SuperSaiyanMusashi wish I had known these things as a kid, this game perplexed me so hard, I gave up on it.
@@alannaevans2402 Ah hello!
@@SuperSaiyanMusashi didn't know you were also a NES Works fan! :)
@@alannaevans2402 Yep. Have been for years
The first Bomberman has hidden bonus items that appear under very obscure conditions, much like in The Tower of Druaga. Thankfully, they're not a requirement for completing the game.
Robowarrior was my best elementary school friend and I's Jam back in the day. Still love the music.
Nice to see Will to Power's cover of both "Baby, I love your Way" and "Freebird" in the eyecatch. The January/February 1989 issue of Nintendo Power lists Bomberman as January 1989 but given that stores probably did break street dates if they knew Nintendo wasn't watching them and it does fit thematically with RoboWarrior, December 1988 is an acceptable guestimate given how records can be a little spotty. And hurray for best NES Zelda next week
I'm not sure that video games even had firm street dates in the 1980s. I think that stores just put them out as they were received.
Yeah, Mortal Monday and Sonic 2sday were the first truly concerted efforts to impose firm release dates on games that I can recall. Before that, it was basically a trickle-down process based on supply chain priority and retailer efficiency. High-price toy-focused stores like Toys ’R Us and KayBee were typically the first to have new releases up for sale, and then those carts would gradually show up at department stores like Walmart, Best, and Service Merchandise over the course of several months, with mall anchor stores like Sears and JC Penney coming in dead last. Combined with the chip manufacturing shortfall that affected the NES during 1988, shopping for new releases involved persistence, luck, and a little bit of desperation.
@@JeremyParish And living in Canada (especially before the free trade agreement took effect in 1994) tended to add further delays. My Grandmother brought us back Super Mario 3 from her trip to the US in March 1990, and we had the game months earlier than any of our friends. (Except those who had bootlegs of the Famicom version.)
My aunt was the purchasing manager at the music store she worked at in the 60s and 70s and she used to tell me how before she started they’d sometimes put certain records up for sale a few days before the “official release” but report those sales on a later date to make the “release week” look better. I would absolutely not be surprised if this happened in smaller game stores too prior to stuff getting more organized in the 90s
Another precursor to Bomberman was Namco's 1981 arcade game Warp & Warp, ported to the NES as Warpman. You start with a gun, but when the center flashes, you can warp to another screen and kill the same monsters with time-delayed bombs.
As covered in the Warp Man episode
Hey it's Spot: The Video Game! I love Spot! Such a charming little video board game.
The dancing skeletons, now luftballons... These old references are a ton of fun.
Robowarrior is one I missed and man am I ever glad I did. It looks like fun, but those mechanics are just brutal. Also, I am amazed at the level of destruction the CPU was raining on you in Othello.
I remember playing a ton of Bomberman on my friend's SNES, finding a used copy of THIS Bomberman and being extremely excited only to realize it played like a very dated arcade game. Where was my multiplayer mayhem?!
You know, if you're willing to compromise historical accuracy, you could also argue that Othello is based on Heiankyo Alien...
I remember watching my dad beat robo warrior as a kid. Hearing that music and sound effects brings back a lot of memories. Great video as usual.
Man seeing NES Bomberman then cutting to Saturn Bomberman is such a night and day difference. I love Bomberman. I have the Turbografx remake of the first game, Super Bomberman 1 and 2, Mega Bomberman, and Saturn Bomberman (sadly, just the Japanese version. I WISH I owned the North American version). I know they're all basically the same game, but when you're in the zone and blowing stuff to Kingdom come it never gets old. Although now that I know it's origins thanks to this video, and because you referenced it and played a clip of it, I'm going to have to play Bomberman (any version) while listening to Nena - 99 Red Balloons. "This is what we've waited for! This is it, boys, this is WAR!" then blow everything on the screen to Hell like Bomberman is dropping nukes on them.
Didn't now that Bakudan Otoko got its start as a demo for BASIC tools for the PC-6800, and those balloon enemies were there from day 1. Guess it as an internal tool instead of a shipped boxed product with paper documentation and printed listings.
Funny thing about the ballons, Mario has a relationship with the Koopa Troopas, and Dragon Quest has their Slimes, but Hudson didn't do anything with the balloons and other enemies of the long running series - at least as far as the Bomberman games I've played.
Neat how if you don't bomb a wall head-on get a half bombed wall, which isn't in any other version.
They use the balloon enemy in:
NES Bomberman
NES Bomberman II
PCE Bomberman
the port of NES Bomberman in Bomber Boy for the GB
their the first enemy in 4 of the 5 Panic Bombers
first enemy on Bomberman Quest, Bomberman Max and Bomberman Max 2 for the GBC and GBA
use them as enemies in the bonus games in Bomberman Story/Bomberman Tournament and Bomberman Jetters Densetsu no Bomberman (iirc)
they show in Bomberman Chains with the rest of the NES enemies
use them in the first two Bomberman Land games
use them in Bomberman Portable and Bomberman DS as regular enemies
and can´t recall any other game right now
@@nero_gb super Bomberman r actually uses them under a new design... and it also gives the bombermen a small little mascotte for the extra world that was added for the major update
What you’re doing here is so cool. I’m glad someone’s taking the time to take a retrospective look at the good, bad & ugly of this era. It’s all important stuff. I’m building my collection of your books. Thanks for all your work!
I am convinced Heiankyo Alien is the most important game of all time and that Ahoy needs to do a long form video on it!
I *love* the transition at 12:53 !
It has been [0] days since the last Heiankyo Alien reference
I think Othello is '88 as I believe I got it for Christmas that year
@@ricardoediza2690 it was just a stocking stuffer if I recall correctly.
So that's it for 1988 on NES.
I can't believe that Famicom got SMB3 the same year, although it was supposedly brutally hard compared to NES version.
It's definitely harder from the fact it still use Mario 1 damage system, where any hit in power-up form (Fire, Racoon, Frog, etc.) will transfer you back to Small Mario. Unlike the western version where taking a hit in those forms only revert you back to Super Mario.
@@PScoopYT The copy of Mario 3 I have is the Japanese one. It's SO much more difficult!
I think of Bomber King as being similar to Rainbow Islands, in that both of them were sequels that didn't take. So we ended up with Bomberman 2 and Bubble Bobble 2 on the NES a few years later.
Rainbow Islands was huge in Europe. Thus its direct sequel, Parasol Stars, got a much wider release here than in the US.
You are the greatest game channel on TH-cam! The depth and research your reviews have is truly undefeated!!
Robo Warrior is a quarter shakedown program. These were popular when the challenge was enough to keep you playing, and learn the sequencing. If the difficulty curve was too high. People would only maybe play it just once.
I remember a Nintendo Power article about the NES Othello being used for the board game's world championship. There was also a really cluttered comic panel with it, which also included a cheat code in it.
I feel like you did Robowarrior dirty here. While there are some Guide Dang Its to it, Energy management becomes easy quickly. Full Health restores are very common drops in both stages and caves and your stockpile of them grows to 99 fast. Your bomb supply is very easy to restore from the unlimited number of weak 1 hit enemies that spawn from the right side of the screen. You didn't even show any of the boss fights!
I really like your dry sense of humor in these videos.
This is an old man moment, but I feel like it's impossible to convey to your younger audience what an absolute stranglehold Nintendo Power had on video game discourse back in the day, if anyone is wondering why a "What did Nintendo Power" say segment is obligatory.
Love your in depth analysis thank you for your uploads
Very insightful! I never knew Bomberman and Robowarrior were built upon so many previous ideas.
I don’t know if you are doing it on purpose or not, but every time you say Bomb in the Ruba warrior review it just gets funnier and funnier.
Sounds like you're enjoying your edible this morning
Can't wait for RoboWarrior 2: Zed's Dead
Ahh yes, "Don Pepe y Sus Globos" classic NES game.
this is probably a sign i should get around to playing bomberman hero sometime! it's soundtrack just makes it too enticing not to...
Cool Spot is a port (with graphic differences) of the Amiga game Infection, which also saw release in arcades as Ataxx (which was a pretty cool game, even if the graphics were really REALLY low color for the time).
Sure, but it fundamentally shares a lot in common with reversi.
@@JeremyParish Yeah I know , I am nothing if not pedantic
Finally somebody can set the record straight on the fact the first bomberman game never had a multiplayer mode... still puzzles me that it was picked for the gba classics line instead of the sequel Bomberman 2/Dyna blasters
The original Bomberman had lots of traction in Japan, and Nintendo organized the GBA Classics line around the Japanese audience (which is why they got 31 games in that line and we got about half that).
I had no idea the 7up spot starred in multiple video games!
Has to be Dec 88…. I rented both Bomberman and Robowarrior on the same day and this was in late Feb 1989 . Generally games were a couple months old before they were available for rental
Once upon a time, my father took us a Hypermart, a kind of proto-Super Walmart. We were amazed to see a single store carry such a wide variety of groceries and goods. I guess just for the novelty of it, he felt compelled to buy a video game there, but I guess he also didn't want to spend a lot of money. And that's how we wound up with a copy of Othello.
Heiankyo Alien also seems to be the inspiration for Namco's 1981 Warp Warp, which is part Bomber Man, part shooting gallery
See NES Works Gaiden
Funny you upload this video the week after composer Takeaki Kunimoto releases his soundtrack CD for Robo Warrior (Bomber King).
Bomberman was one of the only good games on a multicart I got hold of when I was a kid. Played the hell out of it.
JP another great video! Say, where can I find that cover of Free Bird!
Othello, aka "the game where you start out winning and end up losing" - at least until you get some experience. I play Pocket Reversi regularly and it's not uncommon for the CPU to give me a thrashing at the slightest inattention on my part, even on the lowest difficulty setting.
I found cib Othello at an estate sale a couple of years ago for a buck. Absolutely pristine condition, don't think it was ever even put into a system.
ZELDA II episode coming next! Yes baby!!! The GOAT NES game!!!!!!
Seahawks suck
@@dannybursace9151 no, you do
I'm surprised that Warp Man wasn't mentioned as an ancestor or at least a cousin of Bomberman. When you enter the warp, the game becomes a whole lot like Bomberman, albeit with less powerful bombs.
I feel like RoboWarrior was Hudson's attempt at toughening up the cutesy Bomberman series, much like Act Zero which would come many years later. Except unlike Act Zero, it was kind of playable...
Already covered it a few months ago.
This is going to quite awkward, considering you'll be seeing Bomberman again in a couple of Gaiden episodes...
That's true, I've never covered a game from different angles/contexts before. Not sure how that's gonna play out.
Haha. The turnaround between the two is going to be interesting. Can't wait. :)
og Bomberman is amazing, don't diss it 😭
Othello for NES was great, also it sold for like 10$ brand new. Well worth it.
Hyankiyo Alien...back to the well again..
"Yep...it's Othello alright" just got a legit lol out of me at work.
I looooooved Bomberman, i once accidentally found a secret/code that ive never seen published anywhere since i found it way back then. Want to know what it is?
Bomberman is an excellent arcade game and the nes version is amazing. 😀👍🎮
Space Panic is an underrated game, and I'm surprised it never got ported to ehe NES, just to bloat their library a little more. (or maybe I just answered my own question)
I had Othello as a kid.
Awesome!
Definitely enjoyed bomberman on nes! othello I got hooked on the board game after emulating the NGPC version so one of these days I may track down the NES version, why not. Robowarrior just sounds like a real slog I feel like I'd wind up hating it after dying repeatedly from running out of energy, ugh.
WHERE does Nintendo have all their NES licensed games listed?
I don't know if Nintendo makes those lists public anymore, but they used to be available on the company's website. They've been preserved by people in various places, including here: www.reddit.com/r/gamecollecting/comments/1dzlc6/i_have_lists_of_all_nes_snes_and_n64_games_us_in/
Yeah robowarrior was pretty bad and while I always have a soft spot for the original Bomberman it was was the Turbographx 16 version that really had me fall in love with the series
Also can't wait for the Zelda 2 episode its an amazing game and in all honesty it still has my favorite soundtrack out of the entire Zelda series
I looked up the real Othello game (originally called Reversi) on the Wiki and yes, although it seems obvious, the name was inspired by the Shakespeare character. The black and the white represent the tension between Othello and his wife Desdemona, who he murders in the end, and the green represents the jealousy that drove him to do it 😕 The game was invented in Japan and I guess they do seem to be big fans of Shakespeare.
Loved Bomberman on DOS... Never player It on NES
Spot isn't Othello, it's Ataxx.
Hudzon!
Dope
Love it
Eric and the floaters, there you go
Heads up since, there's an audio glitch/skip at around 7:31
I figured you might want to know in case you want to fix it before the episode is available to non patrons
what game is that heyanko alien again? I swear I've never heard you talk about it before >P
13:12 wait.... what? 😯
I've heard of an EMBELLISHED truth...
Not sure I've ever heard the phrase "embroidered truth" ?
(shrugs)
I love Robowarrior and beat it but it really is hard.
I used a Gane Genie to beat Robowarrior.
Sorry, NOT sorry.
That game was ridiculously hard,
mostly because of the constent energy drain on your life bar.
If you could have aquired special items, after beating bosses, that would have made certain powers permanent ( like an upgrade that would have lit up caverns with little to no battery drain) that would have made it better to me.
Nope, I think the only thing boss fights got you was a longer energy bar.
I had Robo Warrior- that game is super impossible 😭😅
How so? How far did you get?
@@SuperSaiyanMusashi I never ever beat the 1st level 😅
His power constantly drains so u have to keep getting batteries
@@MrCalverino Ah I think I see the problem! You gotta use your items. Those E marked Shields restore your health to full upon use. Also, bomb everywhere in early levels; you'll build up a stash fast.
@@SuperSaiyanMusashi EVERYTHING is against you! U even have a time limit
@@MrCalverino yes I understand that. But once you've gathered a few of those E Tiles, the time limit is pretty much a non issue
Wait, so Bomberman is as old as PacMan? Wtf?!
EVERYTHING IS HEIYANKYO ALIEN
Have you heard of Inspector Gadget
He's just a little guy! A silly little guy.
heiankyo alien
Othello was better when they called it Spot: The Video Gamea!
#7UP!
I like that the othello cursor has painted fingernails.
Neckermann
I play the nes version of Othello when I was a kid and it's boring.