Bomberman 64
Platform: Nintendo 64
Media: Cartridge
Genre: Platformer
Release Year: 1997
Developer: Hudson Soft
Publisher: Nintendo
Players: Single-player, multiplayer
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Story

In the game's opening sequence, a peaceful-looking planet with gardens, rivers, and residential buildings abound is shown. Seconds later, the space pirate, Artemis, drops from the sky with a band of soldiers and orders them to raid the planet. Meanwhile, Altair (the leader of the space pirates), watches from the Black Fortress, using his coveted weapon, the Omni Cube, to completely drain the planet's energy, condemning it to a zombie-like state.

Artemis returns to the Black Fortress to meet up with her partners, fellow pirates Orion and Regulus and her superior, Altair. Together, they set their sights on their next target: Planet Bomber, home of the protagonist, Bomberman. They maneuver their fortress into the atmosphere of Planet Bomber.

Bomberman, from atop a cliff, observes the Black Fortress' descent. Not much later, the Fortress begins to open fire on the people of Planet Bomber, firing destructive energy rays into populated areas.

A warrior clad in white then flies out to the surprised Bomberman, and asks if he plans to defeat the assailants. Bomberman gives an affirmative response, and the stranger (later introduced as Sirius) explains that a force field protects the Fortress from any outside attack. Sirius goes on to say that this force field can be deactivated by destroying the four anchors attached to the Fortress; the "Green Garden": a ruin-filled natural world, "Blue Resort": a fortress surrounded by water, "Red Mountain": a large volcano fraught with danger, and "White Glacier": a large, snowy mountain covered in ice. Once inside the Fortress, they must find and destroy Altair.

Bomberman successfully climbs onto and destroys the four anchors with the help of Sirius, who helps him by supplying power-ups and teaching him new techniques. Once force field around the Fortress is deactivated, the duo enter the Fortress. After sneaking through Altair's security measures, Bomberman finds and confronts Altair, and after a difficult struggle, defeats the pirate. The previously defeated Regulus swoops in and attempts to rescue his master from the battlefield, but is then knocked away by Sirius. Altair drops the Omni Cube, which Sirius lands on the battle platform to retrieve. At this point, Altair is annihilated by a newly powered-up Sirius. Sirius reveals that he was only using Bomberman's abilities into taking back the Omni Cube which was stolen by Altair, adding that he was sick of working with him and lying to him during the mission. He then takes the Omni Cube and escapes to his secret lair to destroy Planet Bomber.

Bomberman pursues him, successfully making his way through the palace, confronting Sirius for his betrayal. When Sirius is about to fire on Bomberman, he is saved by Regulus, knocking him away and destroying the Omni cube. With the aid of Regulus, Bomberman succeeds and defeats Sirius. Without the power of the Omnicube, The Rainbow Palace crashes into the Black Fortress, destroying both, as Regulus escapes with Bomberman, informing him that he was quite surprised with Bomberman's ability to defeat Sirius, as he and his comrades had considerable difficulty taking the Omnicube from Sirius. Regulus leaves Planet Bomber, stating that one day he will have a rematch with his new rival, Bomberman, who celebrates his victory.

Gameplay

This game is featured in full 3D, thus the directional controls change. Bomberman is able to walk in eight directions with a rotating camera facing in eight directions and with three different zooms. His bombs have a different effect than in other games of the series; the bomb's explosion waves have a spherical pattern rather than the traditional cross-shaped ones.

In both single player and multiplayer modes, Bomberman always has the ability to kick, pick up, and throw bombs, without the need of powerups, as in previous games. A unique feature of this game is that Bomberman can "pump" a bomb while holding it, which will make the bomb's explosion more powerful. A pumped-up bomb cannot be kicked or picked up again. Unlike most platform games of its time, Bomberman cannot jump, nor can he swim in water, although he can wade in shallow water. Since Bomberman lacks the ability to jump, higher areas that do not have a path leading to them must be reached by bouncing across bombs - typically this requires the "remote" power-up to avoid the normally timed bombs exploding early. "Bomb jumping" is actually required to fully explore most levels, retrieve certain power-ups, and cross many obstacles.

If Bomberman runs into an enemy NPC, or is hit on the head by a small object, such as an unexploded bomb, he will get dizzy temporarily (he will sit there dizzy with "X" eyes and stars rotating around his head). While in this state, he can get picked up by an enemy and thrown around or even off the map. Conversely, Bomberman can do the same to an enemy.

When Bomberman takes damage, he dies. If he has a "heart" power-up when he's hit, he will survive, but he will lose the heart. When he dies all powerups that he had obtained will scatter all over the place. In the Normal single-player mode, taking damage simply causes Bomberman to drop the heart, and if it doesn't bounce off the level, he can pick it up again to survive another hit. In the Hard mode, the heart will simply disappear. The Game has 4 bosses Artemis the only female boss, shoots fiery feathers at bomberman and kicks bombs at him just like all other bosses, she can also like all other bosses dizzy bomberman by touching him on hard mode. orion his goal is to dizzy bomberman with a sheild and hoist him up and through him in lava an also dizzy bomberman by touching him on hard. regulus he trys to do a dash at bomberman if he catches bomberman he hurts him with combat moves such as punches and kicks. can also dizzy bomberman by touching him on hard mode and sirius the guy who helps bomberman through the adventure challenges bomberman to a match he does exactly what bomberman can do he also can dizzy bomberman by touching him on hard mode.

Game progression

At the start of the game, Bomberman can enter any of four anchors, which are terrariums of other planets (that were probably drained by Altair). The starting worlds are: Green Garden, Blue Resort, Red Mountain, and White Glacier. In each anchor there are four stages. The first and third stages are adventure stages where Bomberman must navigate through the stage by solving puzzles and blasting his way toward the "Goal Arrow." The second and fourth stages are boss stages, Bomberman must fight Sirius or one of Altair's subordinates in the second stage, and he must fight the world's guardian in the fourth.

After Bomberman beats the first four anchors, he can enter the Black Fortress. Like the previous worlds, the first and third stages are adventure stages, but this time Bomberman must fight the guardian in the second stage and Altair himself in the fourth stage.

In every stage there are five gold cards to collect (100 total). Once all gold cards have been collected, the player can unlock the secret world, Rainbow Palace. After all the gold cards have been collected from there (an additional 20, making a grand total of 120 Gold Cards) the player unlocks more courses in multiplayer mode plus the "Full Power" cheat option. With the cheat activated, Bomberman starts with 8 bombs, 5 flames, power bombs, and remote bombs.

Advertising

For the promotion of Bomberman Hero in the 1997 holiday season, Nintendo of America released a commercial featuring an altered version of the theme song of the 1967 Spider-Man TV series.