Bomberman GB

If you've followed the site's oddball trek from varied content to just video games to primarily cartoons to action figure rants and then onto talking about things nobody cares about (my life!), then you're sure to know of my love for all things Bomberman. I've got a heap of the games, made far too many walkthroughs than necessary for such a simple series, tried to watch the cartoon, and even have a bunch of the Bomberman B-Daman figures from the 1990s, imported from Malaysia! It's safe to say that throwing me in a crazy house would be totally ethical.

Why exactly I love the series, however, isn't exactly something I can understand. My appreciation of the Mega Man series stems from it's simplicity and how it rigidly sticks to tradition, a sequel that makes a radical departure kind of automatically becoming crap, unlike the likes of the Mario series where they can barely just keep the same concept and fine-tune it a bit. Obligatory mention of Transformers and my love of it is more to do with my generic love of robots and robots that may as well act like humans, and turning into a toaster only makes it more awesome. But Bomberman? The mothertruck just has the same gameplay in every game and yet it's constantly hit or miss.

The first Bomberman game is ass because it's just the same looking levels done over and over with an occasional new enemy, sometimes with a gimmick, sometimes not, and nothing really changes. On the contrary, Bomberman Quest features ludicrously simple puzzles that barely add a thing (jump over a pit!) and the enemies only sometimes have gimmicks, yet I love it a million times more. Bomberman 64 and Bomberman Generation are roughly the same puzzle/exploration style gameplay, yet the latter I can only play in multi-player without dying of death or boredom. Super Bomberman 2 is no different than the rest in it's series, yet I can barely play it without screaming obscenities and becoming a hazard to those around me. Put a game in front of me and it's an opinionated roulette of mystery!

The worst part is, the first game's crappy kill-all-enemies gameplay has been recycled over and over, and while the likes of Bomberman Quest actually make it fun a lot of games don't even bother with improving in any way, and Bomberman GB could almost be seen as making it worse.
You're given a large playing field, as typical with first game imitators, though instead of varied enemies you merely fight other Bombermen in rounds of three; win two, and you'll progress to the next segment with another enemy added to the rank, and this continues until you're facing three other Bombermen. After that, the three merge to form a boss, which will grant you a power-up upon defeat and move you onto the next stage, which then have wacky gimmicks from then on like warp pads!

In concept, this doesn't sound too bad. The battle mode is always more engaging than single-player, even when facing computers, so you'd expect some kind of intelligence from them, wouldn't you?

Wrong.
These guys have degrees in stupidology. They'll happily stand in the way of an explosion, trap themselves behind their own explosives, avoid taking evasive action and even blow up their comrades. I'm not even talking Suicide Bomber style where they try and take you down as well, I'm saying these guys are just plain stupid. Or depressed. Either or.

The first game had no bosses whatsoever, so having some is at least a nice addition, even if they are particularly frustrating and are pretty cheap when it comes to attacking, meaning they're the most challenge the game ever provides. However, the primary problem with these guys is that they are the only way to get permanent items; you can pick up a whopping three items during a match, Bombs, Flames and Skulls, but they're lost after every round and only what bosses grant you are stored for good, but they're just things like kick shoes or a stunning ram or whatever. Nice to have, yes, but a forever-lasting long explosion would just make things less tedious, y'know.

And those wacky gimmicks? They barely add a thing to the game, and thanks to the outright shallowness of it all with the lack of items and whatnot, it all seems very empty. The most interesting addition the game has is the last item you obtain: The Moto, a badass motorbike that doesn't make you move any faster or provide an extra hit like the Louies, but it does allow you to hop other hard blocks, which allows battles to end a lot quicker, thankfully. Sadly, that sole item can't make up for this being one of the blandest Bomberman games available, and it's a good thing it never made a release outside of Japan.
 

Oh wait.

For whatever reason, not only was one of the most dire games in the series given a localisation, but it was given special treatment in doing so. Special treatment in the form of a Wario crossover

In what should be a crime against everything ever, this crappy, should-be-forgotten game got Wario as a starring role, yet with no other improvements. You can select between Wario and Bomberman, the ending is slightly different, the Super Game Boy border has a measly addition, and that's it.
That's all that's been changed.
They had the perfect opportunity to perhaps fix the game; not that anything was broken, but it kind of completely sucked; and they missed it. And they put Wario in it!

Considering the original game was shallow enough to barely warrant five paragraphs rambling about it, it means that one can't really say much more about the game other than how those are the only changes and how it's still fifty kinds of terrible even with a radical crossover. Because, come on, perfect opportunity for awesome!
So instead of repeating that last sentence in as many ways as my vocabulary can handle, let's see how things could have been if that crossover was used for something more deserving.
 

Say if they added Wario to Super Bomberman 2...

Not only would that add a 2-Player mode to the main game, but it would also make the game easier, less frustrating, more fun, and having the wacky concept of Bomberman and Wario working together to stop the Five Dastardly Bombers!

And I admit that's all I can think of, but since that game is actually a good one hindered by it's flaws rather than a boring one made easy to loathe with it's special treatment and overall shoddy quality, it's more than enough thought I should give it.