0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Bomberman Wars

       

Bomberman Wars is an isometric strategy tactical role playing game developed by Metro and HudsonSoft, and published by Hudson Soft this release was one of the first in the series to move away from it’s party game roots.

The game was the third Bomberman game to release on the Sega Saturn and the second to release on the Playstation, both console releases we exclusive to Japan. The game released concurrently on both the Sega Saturn and Playstation on the 16^th of April 1998

Notable people who worked on this game, Hideo Mao who worked as a Graphic Designer on the game also worked on the graphics for Bomberman Party Edition, we was a Designer on the 2011 released Final Fantasy IV The Complete Collection and more recent worked as a Stage Character Artist on Street Fighter V and a Character Modeler for Monster Hunter Stories.

Toshifumi Sekijima who worked as the CG Director on Bomberman Wars, a role he would also hold for the previously covered Bomberman Fantasy Race. He worked as a CG Character Modeller for Bloody Roar 2 in 1999 and a 3D Graphic Designer on Bomberman Online in 2001.

Since then Sekijima has worked on a good number of Nintendo titles, he worked as a Mini Game artist on Mario Party 4 in 2002, he was a Graphic Designer for Mario Party 9 in 2012 and was promoted to Design Director for the 2015 released Mario Party 10.

While the game has moved away from your traditional Bomberman gameplay it does still retain some elements from the original game with bomb placement still a major part but altered to fit the more tactical strategy of this new game.

The game still features a versus mode in which two human players can face off against each other like the story mode this mode as well moves away from a traditional Bomberman game. This mode allows the player to play against either the computer or another player, if playing against the computer you can set the difficulty from weak to normal and strong difficulty being the hardest.

You can also set the number of rounds to play from between 1 to 5, there are a total of eight different stages to play on in this mode, these include Hero Plaza, Bomber Park, Legendary Sanctuary, Warrior Hill, Flame Battlefield, Underground Corridor, Nameless Palace and Arena of Trials

Moving on to the Story mode, this is the main meat of the game and features a tactical battle system in which the player must choose 4 units along with the Bomber King who is the main character of the game. The player chooses their squad of units before hand and must use their varying abilities to defeat to opposing team, each unit has differing movement and bomb placement stats, with some units even having special abilities

Movement of your party is done with the D-Pad, moving the cursor icon to the desired location on the battle screen, the battles are turn based with the player moving their characters then the enemies moving. The bottom right of the screen shows the number of turns remaining. An indicator of the next unit or Soft Block which can be selected is also indicated next to the turns remaining number

 

Bombs that are placed on the field will have a timer on them to, this timer starts at 5 and counts down by one after a round of turns has been completed. In the event of a battle reaching the 0 turns remaining mark Pressure Bomb mode will be initiated, during this mode two bombs will be dropped at a random location after every turn, this will continue until the battle is finished.

Items can be aquired during the course of a fight, these appear in Soft Blocks, these are one of the core elements of the Bomberman series and are the block that are cleared by the player, just as in Bomberman these Soft Blocks can be hiding items.

The items that can be found range from coins which can be used to buy items from the shop at Bomber Castle, additional movement or attack power ups can be picked up as well as items like Geta, Bomb Kick, Heart Timer and Egg.

The Shop in Bomber Castle allows you to purchase items for coins that you have collected, these items have varying effects in battle, for example Loose Bell which costs 2 coins increases the countdown fuse of every bomb on the battlefield by five. While Angel Voice which is the most expensive item coming in at 10 coins gives the player an additional turn.

 

A battle in Story mode can be won in one of two ways, the first is for the player to destroy the opposing Bomber King, the second way is to defeat all other units other than the opposing Bomber King, this method of victory works as a checkmate, this method only works for none bosses, these must be defeated in order to complete the stage.

The game features a central hub called Bomber Castle, this contains rooms that allow the player to save the game, purchase items and select which Bomber units you want to take into battle. The game features 16 types of unit that can be taken into battle ranging from Bomber Hero and Fighter to Bomber Fairy and Bomber Paladin.

Each of these units have a movement rating and range rating, for example the Bomber Fighter has a movement and range of 2, The Bomber Fighter does not have a special attack. On the other hand the Fairy Bomber has a special latent ability that allows them to walk on water, while having a movement of 2 and range of 1.

One day, a village full of Bombermen are attacked by a Lizard man, as some of the frightened Bombermen try to run away, one of them trips and is about to be trampled by the Lizard Man. Suddenly Bomber Hero appears along with his companions to defeat the Lizard Man, a huge celebration is thrown in their honour.

Some time later and the Bomber Hero has grown into a Bomber King, he is spending time outside on his castle balcony when he is overcome by a dark omen of the evil Dark Bomber appearing to terrorize Bomberland, sensing the worst and the possible impending danger to Bomberland he assembles and army to challenge this evil.

This being a Japanese only released game, western reviews for the title are very, very thin on the ground, with just one available. This review comes from German publication Mega Fun who rated Bomberman Wars at a respectable 74.

The reviewer finding that Hudson Soft has presented a good strategy game that can hold you captive for a while. Difficulty wise the reviewer found the game to be quite tough with even the simplest of fights having to be replayed.

Technically the reviewer found the game to be hardly convincing with average graphics and overall offering nothing new. Concluding the review said, Thus, Bomberman Wars remains more of a game for chess freaks wanting to join the bomber wave.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit four online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com, eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to, I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, Ebay has now been dropped unless the game is unavailable at other retailers.

 

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, where unsurprisingly we don’t find this Japanese only release listed, the same goes for Retrogames.co.uk and eStarland.com. So we will head to Amazon.com in the hopes of finding at least one copy of the game available.

 

We do find at least one copy, in fact we find a good supply of the game listed on Amazon.com where we find two very good condition copies on offer for just $9.47, with both coming with free shipping as well, another free shipping and very good condition copy is also available for $10.01.

Very good condition is the best you will be able to get for this game when it comes to used copies, used prices remain largely competitive with a good number priced between $9.47 and $13.43. Some used prices do increase a fair amount from this point with a current used price high of $32.99

If you are in the market for a new copy of Bomberman Wars you will find a good number of them available, prices however start significantly higher than the used copies, with the current cheapest on offer being priced at $32.76, this copy does come with free shipping as do many of the new copies that are on offer. Prices for a new copy steadily rise with prices currently hitting a high of $77.71 for a new copy of the game. 

Written by

P J Gibbon