Bomberman II

Bomberman II

NES - USA - 1st edition.

Developer Hudson Soft Publisher Hudson Soft Published 1991-06-28 Platforms NES Genres Action, Maze video game Themes Action, Cartoon Series Bomberman Multiplayer Simultaneous versus Distribution Commercial

Bomberman II is an action strategy game developed and published by Hudson Soft for the Nintendo Entertainment System on 1991-06-28. As the title suggests, it's the second Bomberman game on the NES, but it's actually the seventh game in the Bomberman series.

In the game's story mode, White Bomberman has been framed for bank robbery by Black Bomberman and put in prison. He must use his bombs to burn up the monsters and blow through walls and find doors to other cells until he finds his way out. The game also features a 2-player versus mode and a 3-player battle mode if you have the necessary controller adapter.

Personal

Own?	No.
Won?	Yes.
Finished	2021-12-06.

I didn't have access to any of the Bomberman games while growing up. When I discovered emulators, I tried this game, but kept on bombing myself into a corner which frustrated me so much I gave up. After finding the SNES games to be wonderful party games, I eventually built up my skill with the mechanic. I then beat a couple other games in the series which made me want to finish the earlier ones. After verifying this game gave unlimited continues, I tried to beat it in earnest.

Review

6	8	7	6	7

Best Version: NES

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• Mika Sasaki's cartoon sprites look great and are well-animated. In fact, all the graphics have a much more polished look than the original. Also, the opening cutscene is cute.
• Jun Chikuma composed great music which perfectly accents the tone of the game and makes good use of the DPCM channel.
• There are a lot of monsters, many with interesting abilities.
• The different power-ups add enjoyable variety to the game.
• I like how the limited time forces the player to become more aggressive, however, it becomes too limited near the end.

Bad

• Since only ridiculously good players can beat the game without needing to continue, points are pretty much irrelevant, and that makes the bonus stage and the money power-up useless.
• The new worlds only introduce new monsters, the backgrounds are just skins. I would have liked to see some variety with each world.
• I would prefer if the manual gave names to the monsters and described their patterns.
• It would have been nice to have a final boss to fight, and the ending is pretty underwhelming.

Ugly

• In the later levels, the game gets unnecessarily difficult. In many area 5 levels, you are often guaranteed to die at the start of a level due to random enemy placement, and, in area 6, you have so little time, it's not uncommon to run out before you even find the exit, let alone kill off all the monsters.

Media

Box Art

• 

  The original Japanese box has three bomber men duke it out on a giant bomb while the game's various monsters watch. The cartoon graphics, although a bit simplistic, fit the game. This is my favorite cover.

• 

  The US art makes the bomber men look like parade floats and wastes most of the cover's real estate. This is my least favorite.

• 

  The European box uses just the fighting bomber men from the Japanese art, and it covers most of that with text and logos like the censored Dynablaster title.

Documentation

• 

  US manual.

Videos

Longplay.

Play Online

Famicom, NES (Europe), NES (USA)

Representation

Strong female character?	Fail	There are no women.
Bechdel test?	Fail	There are no women.
Strong person of color character?	Fail	The characters don't have a clear race.
Queer character?	Fail	There are no queer characters.

Credits

Roles	Staff
Main Programmer	Yasuhiro Kosaka
Graphic Designer	Mika Sasaki
Game Designer	Hitoshi Okuno
Music Composer	Jun Chikuma (as Atsushi Chikuma)
Sound Programmer	Hitoshi Okuno, Osamu Narita
Producer	Shigeki Fujiwara
Special Thanks	Benhur Nagachan (as Benhur Nagachan), Onji Kuwahara (as Onji Kuwahara)

Titles

Language	Native	Transliteration	Translation
English (Europe)	Dynablaster
English (USA)	Bomberman II
Japanese	ボンバーマンII	Bonbaman II	Bomberman II

Links