Developer(s): Raizing, Hudson
Soft
Publisher: Hudson Soft
One Player
Nintendo Virtual Boy
I am Amorphous-Man. I will rock your little world.
When talking of video game
history, one which is stuck in a nebulous place where Nintendo has referred to the Virtual
Boy but it is clearly a black eye for them. They have referred to it - one
example being WarioWare, Inc.: Mega
Microgames! (2003) for the GameBoy
Advance with Mario Clash (1995)
referenced as a mini-game - but they do not re-release the titles for the
notorious console, not practical to sell as a handheld, at a time of advanced
home consoles like the Sega Saturn,
simply because you had to stick your head in a visor that entirely subsumes
your vision. It was an attempt at a virtual reality based console that, played
with a visor on a stand, was released in 1995 and brushed to the side in just
1996, which shows how badly the product was even if by perception by Nintendo themselves, who focused on the
original handheld GameBoy managing to
survive for an entire decade and the approaching Nintendo 64. Even the Wii U,
another unsuccessful console from between 2012 to 2017, managed more than a
couple hundred games, and to last longer than a single year. Other superior
retrospectives, with extensive research, can document the Virtual Boy's short and tumultuous history1. This is a review of one such title from the
machine's tiny collection of releases, the Virtual
Boy having only fourteen releases in the West, eight additional ones in
Japan. These titles have been preserved by emulation and by a hardcore fandom
for the console in spite of the general infamy of Nintendo's real failure.
Panic Bomber is also a spin-off to Hudson Soft's Bomberman,
a long lasting franchise which, played on whatever console, worked with the
simple idea that has appealled over the decades. That, playing a cute little
humanoid, you negotiate around a maze-like stage and drop bombs behind you, hoping
you have timed them to explode when an enemy or another player are caught in
their explosion radius. The first game was released in 1983 and has become an
institution - barring one ill-advised attempt to make a gritty realistic
version, the infamous Xbox 360 Bomberman: Act Zero (2006), the series
has lasted, and like many other popular franchises, a puzzle spin-off in Panic Bomber began in 1994 for PC Engine Super CD, and continued to the
Playstation Portable handheld with Bomberman: Panic Bomber (2005). It was
inevitable alongside how Bomberman
has had single player adventure games, mini-game compilations and other genre
tangents along the way. The strange touch with this specific version, for the Virtual Boy, is how this was developed
with Raizing. Raizing, becoming Eighting
in the decades after, is more famous from this era and to the current day for
legendary shooters like Battle Garegga
(1996). Even with their other Hudson
Soft collaborations, it was instead with the Bloody Roar franchise, 3D fighting games whose central gimmick was
the cast being able to turn into animal people, making this early moments in
their studio's career, a rare step into a puzzle game for a company prolific
for shooters and beat-em-ups, quite a curious tangent.
Panic Bomber as played on the Virtual
Boy is complicated in explaining how its gameplay works, despite being
extremely simple in action when you get what is going on. You have a Tetris-like structure of falling
blocks, of character faces (or whatever you choose in the option selection),
that however you have to match three or more identical of instead of how Tetris works, in straight lines or
diagonals or longer connecting chains. The more of these you complete provide
you with bombs, important as, as you will collect debris as the game continues
with an opponent, the point is to blow up the bombs with a lit one to remove
the debris, which will go onto the opponent's side. A giant bomb can be
acquired if you are lucky, comically large, which will clear whatever it lands
on in vast quantities. The challenge, as with other puzzle games with this
structure whether against an opponent or your wits by yourself, is trying to
avoid the blocks filling up to the top, to which it is game over, with the
increasing speed and the computer A.I. getting one step in front of you the
increased challenge. Multiplayer sadly was not possible for the Virtual Boy; the planned link cable
never came to be1, so this is one player only despite its
presentation, two rectangular play areas for each opponent, being structurally
simple for a multiplayer experience.
The initial aspect to contend
with is the Virtual Boy look. Played
on the original hardware or not, with the three dimensional optical effect kept
or not, the Virtual Boy was only limited
to black and red. Honestly, it looks gorgeous in hindsight despite this, as
with the original Nintendo GameBoy a
quality of art still possible for the system. Panic Bomber is not an elaborate game at all for this system too.
The plot is merely an aesthetic to add to the fun, that the titular Bomberman
is after the legendary Golden Statue of the Bombermen, which has led to him
having wandered onto the mysterious island of Ever-Mist to acquire it. Taking
on a series of three stages, before a main boss, consisting of two enemies and
one mini-boss for each, your protagonist, based on the mascot of the Bomberman
franchise with the white helmet, is to acquire the three medals required to
finally locate the Golden Statue. Based on horror iconography, i.e. a mummy
bomberman or a Frankenstein's monster bomberman, the game's sense of charm does
win you over for what is still, structurally, an uncomplicated competitive
puzzle game. The only thing worth mentioned as well as "Skull Mode",
which can be turned on and off, where you can acquire power-ups, such as ones
which reverse the controls are clear the gaming area, when you or your
opponents blast your bricks, which offers an additional gameplay challenge.
Consisting of opening images with
taunts at your player, this is not a scary game when you are fighting the likes
of blob creatures or Cecil the Tiger which most would want plush figures of to
cuddle. How could you not love Cecil for example, a limbless blob cat creature
whose opening comments in English text is the threat of "Cecil The Tiger is the name, I eat intruders
and pizza too!" You feel sad for when the poor thing bursts into tears
when you beat him, the animation of your opposing players in the matches,
requisite for this era of competitive puzzle games like the Puzzle Bobble franchise, exceptionally
good in mind to the Virtual Boy's
infamy. Knowing Nintendo have not
released titles from the system, these games lacking availability is tragic as,
barring that they all have to be depicted in shades of red against black, games
like this are still beautifully made in context of a console that was the
failed VR disaster for then. Only that they were made for a system which had to
prompt warnings of taking a break for eyestrain would undercut the prettiness
of the production.
Those automatic pauses, which are
an option to have, do emphasis that this piece of the long standing spin-off
just had the unfortunate position of being on what was a quickly doomed
project. If this had been a late era GameBoy
title, the animation even in black-and-white (or green and black) would have
still been this slick even if there might have been some compromise. Barring
its somewhat quirky sentences - never has there been a threat requiring a lot
of baggage to unpack as "Find a happy
place to cry!" - Panic Bomber
as it looks could happily appear on a Nintendo
console as a download without anyone feeling embarrassed. The irony is knowing
when the fifth generation of games consoles was about polygonal 3D being the
new style to replace the old 2D games, two dimensional sprite graphics have
been embraced in the decades after, and having played Panic Bomber not in 3D optics, it looks stupendous in appearance in
context of the Virtual Boy's
graphical limitations. The 3D gimmick in context does not make sense for it
either, as the game, seeing the vistas of a Sahara desert within the same world
as a Dracula's castle behind the game stages, is still pretty to look at
without that gimmick.
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Panic Bomber as a game grew when I decided not to just play the
Normal mode, but complete Hard for the true ending. Count Dracu-boom (aka.
Bombpire in the Japanese version) is the big heavy for the game, and befitting
a Count Dracula, he is a bastard to face in a best-of-three conflict for the
Golden Bomber Statue, but he is not the true final boss. If you beat him
without any losses, the true final boss is a female Bomberman who is a continuous
character in the series beforehand. Named Ms. Flashy, or Pretty Bomberman from
the original name, she was introduced as a boss character in Super Bomberman 2 (1994) for the Super Nintendo System before becoming a
side character as much as a continuous villainess. Even if her character design
is stereotypically feminine, it makes a pleasant change, if you hit the right
successes to be able to fight her, to have a woman as the final boss. With the
speed of the game picking up with how the blocks fall, she is tough too, so it
adds to the surprise of her as a hidden final opponent.
Beyond this, there is not much to
say as Panic Bomber is a short game
if you can beat it. Using a password system for stages, the best players could
finish both difficulties in less of an hour, and most players like me will try
over and over again to defeat the game. The lack of multiplayer is something
many would have found disappointing with Panic
Bomber too, but not only is that less of an issue for me, the context
knowing Virtual Boy's life was so
short, and the accessory to allow multiplayer never even came into fruition,
explains the problem was entirely in context of the machine this version was
created for. The idea of the Virtual Boy,
whilst one I would like to try, of straining my neck in a claustrophobic view
piece, which entirely submerges your attention to focus on its red-and-black
games, is also worth bringing up; whilst the video games for this machine might
have been spectacular, its gimmicky nature come as off-putting for me, one
which would have helped make a struggle of even appreciating a short game like Panic Bomber which is nonetheless with
great virtues. Let alone with multiplayer if it was available, especially as it
would mean linking to Virtual Boys in
their enclosed worlds up together, the machine's central concept does feed into
the idea of when consoles try to be more than game systems, they do undercut
themselves; why the Nintendo Wii succeeded was that, whilst motion
controls, it sold as a machine for families and groups at parties as much as
kept key titles from the company alive for their hardcore fans, not enclosed
you in a visor.
The Hard mode play for me, with
the sweeter ending even if it is just two bomber-people enjoying the sight of
fireworks in a mostly still image, did change this review for the better, as
whilst I did admire the game for its virtues, the second play led to me
appreciating Panic Bomber further. Despite
its short length, the game's structure is so rich that, in spite of the
limitations of length or a lack of multiplayer, it has a lot of potential
depth. The Panic Bomber premise
improved once my initial issues with the game, how it felt awkward at first,
especially with the blocks always in L-shapes, dissipated. The challenge and
the try-over-and-over logic, like running into a brick wall until the wall
eventually collapsed, won me over, and honestly, this game alongside the
others, even a reboot, would gain fans especially with the virtue of the Bomberman franchise.
Unlike Puzzle Bobble, or Bust-A-Move,
a puzzle spin-off to Taito's Bubble Bobble franchise which became
strong enough to be its own franchise, Panic
Bomber was a tangent, one worth bringing back but clearly a tangent
alongside those in unexpected genres like the RPG for the franchise over the
decades. Having tasted a little of it as a teen, from a Playstation One release, Bomberman's
biggest virtue alongside the gameplay of the proper franchise was its cute
look, contrasting the fact you were blowing people up with its cute appearance
and colourful world. The same applies here with its cute characters and the
music, which is composed by Shinichi
Sakamoto and Atsushi Chikuma, and
adds to the charm despite at times also sounding like the prelude to the Silver
Shamrock song from Halloween III: Season
of the Witch (1982)2. Notwithstanding a lambasted attempt at a
gritty reboot, Bomberman is a
wholesome looking game even if about handling explosives. The franchise was
prolific in this era up to 2012, where multiple titles within a year, for many
consoles, were released by Hudson Soft,
and its franchise legacy comes as much from this charm as the gameplay.
Released in Japan on 21st July
1995, and the United States on 1st December 1995, this version of Panic Bomber is just one of the many
titles from that prolific run of Bomberman
games, main titles and spin-offs, from Hudson
Soft. After Konami acquired the
company in 2012, the main franchise had a huge gap between 2010 and 2017 before
Super Bomberman R in 2017, and Super Bomberman R Online in 2020, would
rectify this. Konami as a company is
its own complicated, messy history especially when the 2010s exposed a series
of problematic business practices, ill-advised decisions with their licenses in
general, the entire fallout of Hideo
Kojima leaving the company within that decade, and general treatment of
their employees alongside the sense of distancing themselves from console gaming
in general3.
Alongside Bomberman R Online, Konami
also commissioned Bombergirl (2018),
an arcade cabinet version which is effectively what happens if you made Bomberman with anime female characters.
Also getting a Japan-only PC release in 2020, the character designs for Bombergirl I will defend to a point. I
find having characters whom, even if sexualised, might work in another game are
worth defending4, if it did not feel like Bombergirl was just bolting onto a newly acquired property the
attempt to sell it on horniness alone rather than a greater creative streak. The
designs stand out, but alongside all the stereotypes of female anime characters
are, from the curvaceous to the schoolgirls, that between their proportions and
skimpy outfits (or when the cloth is blown up), you clearly had a game meant to
be sold on generic titillation first, making Ms. Flashy in Panic Bomber with her bow and skirt look discrete in comparison. Bomberman is a wholesome looking game
even if about handling explosives, and likewise, with Bomberman R existing, the franchise was able to exist. It does feel
with a sense however, with their creator's acquisition, the golden era of the Bomberman franchise is of a different
time period. With a game like Panic Bomber,
you see this franchise that, even on a failed console, would plough on with new
titles in the main and side-games, and its personal sense of creativity is to
be found even here.
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1) The Bad Game Hall of Fame, an exceptional website which intends by its
creator Cass to properly examine
"bad" and notorious games of the past, is an inspiration for these
game writings of mine, and the Virtual Boy retrospective special,
from 9th January 2018, is as lengthy and insightful on this project's tragic
existence as you could want.
2) The soundtrack is charming,
but getting used to the game, there was a brief period it felt inappropriately
eerie in its 8-bit form. The reference, to a once-maligned and fascinating
horror sequel, is appropriate, but beware that the Silver Shamrock jingle from
that film is a true earworm.
3) Inside
Konami: public shaming, tyrannical management and punitive reassignment,
published on Games Industry on 3rd
August 2015 by Dan Pearson is a good
warts-and-all snapshot of this period Konami went through publically.
4) One character Olive - here a mildly NSFW link to the Contra fan wiki for the visual illustration - meant to be a tribute
to Konami's Contra franchise and included as a bonus character later on, has
suspendered parachute trousers which do not hide her underwear and bra. Alongside
her multicolour hair, some of the art for the character, with the Russ Meyer approved cleavage size
looking closer to a hentai (porn) fan art for a Bomberman character, do show a clear sense of Bombergirl being sold to tap into the horniness market. Olive, to
not sound like a hypocrite, is probably least the most imaginative of the lot I
have seen of the Bombergirl
character designs, at least memorable and creative despite all the following
aspects of hers being as extreme in sexualisation as you can get. Far more a
sign that Bombergirl's interest in
horniness does deserve criticism as a cynical marketing ploy, and dubious for
gender depictions, is how a lot of the characters in contrast just
stereotypical tropes you have seen within anime or Japanese video games, with
the exaggerated proportions or the obvious concerns that the cute younger
characters are meant to be "pretty" too, with a generic nature to all
but some of the more inventive and colourful of them.
You somewhat have a clear (if
buried) warning that Konami's
acquisition of Hudson Soft had not
quite go the direction fans may have hoped. It is telling that Bomberman never came back until 2017,
and alongside Contra: Rogue Corps (2019),
Konami's own reboot of their own
license, being a maligned and very badly regarded reboot, it is with hesitance
with a company that was demonised for problematic behaviour stumbles along with
these licenses; Bombergirl with less
horniness, and a Contra game with a
armed sentient panda, are inherently interesting ideas, but we are stuck with a
company whose shakiness in reputation grew from the 2010s on. Not even knowing
of Bombergirl until this article,
the morbid side of me wants to play the game, even with a complete lack of
guilt, but as much of me wonders it will be a potential slog when most would
rather play a cute original Bomberman
game with less of the porn-like character designs.