Games of the Abstract: Panic Bomber (1995)

 

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.

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.