Bomberman '94 (TurboGrafx-16) review "The final boss is a real jerk."

This is the one, baby. Ahem. This is the version that was ported to most major platforms of the day and even saw release on mobile (apparently). It is the closest to “definitive” Bomberman you’re ever going to experience. Everything else is just a variation on this. So, ostensibly, could you play this and have the best time ever as a Bomberman player? That all depends.

Fundamentally, this is all known territory: As Bomberman, you traverse a grid-like space consisting of hard and soft blocks, the latter of which you can and must destroy in order to progress. Enemies are usually trapped in arrangements of these blocks, so you have to decide when and how you want to deal with them. Keep an eye on the time and the powerups you acquire, as well, because you're going to need every advantage at your disposal. A key difference between this and other Bomberman titles is how you proceed between levels: You'll locate and destroy small metallic towers that keep the parts of the planet emblem sealed away in a glass bubble in order to continue onward.



Bomberman 94 is a surprisingly short affair, with just eighteen stages spread across five worlds and the final boss, all told, making for a fairly cursory single-player adventure. Even though it is brief, it does shine with personality. Someone has stolen Planet Bomber’s planet talismans and split the world into five pieces. After you’ve saved the first section of the planet, shadowy enemies come along and beat up your friends, protecting the remaining pieces. They’re shown leaning on a crutch wrapped in bandages, and that’s pretty cute. Bomberman himself throws off those same bandages when you choose to continue playing the game over the screen.

That’s the signature personality players expect from Bomberman, and it’s in full effect here. Another distinct pleasure is the stages themselves. Gone are the strictly rectangular arenas, replaced with stages that can take almost any shape the developers wish, and they really explore the studio sp--er, the gamut of design. The early stages are more basic in design, but they take a step beyond bridges into some truly fun and challenging territory.



Some stages turn pitch black, leaving you with a relatively small circle of visible era to work with. That might sound counterintuitive for this type of game, but you can always see enemies' eyes (in another bid toward the cute factor), and I never found it frustrating. Other states have more peculiar hazards, like penguins that fire stunning rockets from off-stage or large accelerator wheels that can send you hurtling. Enemy variety is also proudly on display, and with unique foes for each section of the planet, there’s a thematic consistency that makes this a joy to experience.

It also works very well for the TurboGrafx-16 as the programmers flex some graphical muscle. This is the best he’s ever going to look on NEC’s uber system, and markedly better than the direct ports to the SNES and Genesis/Mega Drive. It is, regrettably, the only advantage the hardware had over its competitors. The music is a mixed bag, straying from the bouncy Bomberman-themed tunes into what sounds like almost traditional but generic – to my untrained ears - Japanese-themed music. It’s not bad and does fill the void while setting the tone when required, but I found it a little jarring.



The team has rebalanced Bomberman 94 almost completely, and that is also a little jarring. Powerups drop far more frequently now, and Bomberman’s explosives have greater base range. Instead of just one block, they can obliterate up to a distance of three blocks away, which is nice when you run out of the short supply of lives and have to continue. The tradeoff is that you lose everything, and I mean everything when you do. At least you’re given unlimited continues and a four-digit numeric passcode. Saving has been omitted, but I suppose that was redundant anyway.

Most powerups make a return here, but some are missing that upset game balance and me, personally. Bomb Trigger, for instance, has been removed entirely, artificially raising game difficulty. Boss battles, while greatly improved, are a slog because you just can’t trigger bombs when you want to. It’s that simple, though it does seem the bosses were largely designed around that. I guess that mitigates the complaint to a point. Others, like a multi-bomb - I think? - they don’t seem to do much at all, and I wonder why they were included. At least we’re not picking up fruit this time around.

To be clear about the bosses: The new sprites are large and animated with phases that will change things up nicely and give you a fair challenge. It didn’t even take that long to figure out their patterns and weak points, but if one thing got on my nerves, it was the final boss. I had to remind myself to stay calm because this jerk was really pissing me off. I suppose that’s the point, but I resorted to saving states to keep my advantage. I don’t see how he’s supposed to be beaten when there’s no way to recover your powerups other than starting from an earlier one, which means intentionally losing. Like I said, it's not the best execution of game balance I’ve ever seen in action.



How about those timers? You are given anywhere from four to ten minutes, depending on the relative size of the level, and even boss battles have timers. They’re short, but I never seemed to run out of time, even with the last boss where it looked like I might. Nuts to that, I died and/or beat him within a minute after my dozenth or so attempt, so that’s well implemented.

That said, Bomberman’s “One Player” campaign is a short affair that you can beat in an afternoon. Fortunately, there’s multiplayer action to be had if you’ve got a multi-controller add-on or a way to link your consoles together. Apparently, that’s a blast, or so I hear. I don’t know about this version, but multiplayer is a hoot on SNES, so I can reasonably assume it would be here, too. There’s no question that Bomberman 94, barring some minor inconsistencies in boss difficulty, is one of the best in the entire franchise.

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Community review by hastypixels (March 31, 2019) Wisdom comes from effort and mistakes.