Bomberman Hero Receives an OFFICIAL Vinyl!

So, we've received quite an exciting announcement more recently. 

I'm guessing the NES Bomberman 1 and 2 vinyls by producer Ship to PhonoCo must've sold quite well because, and completely out of nowhere, Konami actually shows us once again that they SORT OF care about legacy titles that aren't the NES ones.

For some context, earlier this year, Konami and Jun Chikuma put out a vinyl containing the entirety of the 2 NES titles' soundtracks on Vinyl with some very neat visuals, including animated sprites on the disc, as well as a nice fusion between the Japanese and US styles present on the cover. While I feel this was a good direction, in addition to a whole music video featured in the Apple-exclusive rhythm game, Amazing Bomberman, dedicated to recalling the events of said first NES title, Super Bomberman and the ambitious sequel, the release was kind of menial in that it featured no composer commentary or any extra goodies that celebrate both the series and it's creators. 

As a bit of idle speculation, I put out a video a while back reading up on an interview conducted with Chikuma conducted by Kotaku around the end of last year, and near the end, she did announce that she intends to put out a lot of her older works and start work on something new. Given that Konami has only NOW begun to reference older Bomberman titles in such a fashion, I wonder if she was campaigning for this at some point? Moreover, if this is true, then could we expect a release of other titles she worked on, such as Super Bomberman 3 internationally, or maybe even the PS1 version of Bomberman World? That's not to say I wouldn't like to see other titles get this treatment, though. Bomberman 64, The Second Attack, and Custom Battler Bomberman are all sitting right there, Konami. 

While I highly doubt she would want to do anything for the series outside of this capacity, though my fingers are secretly crossed for one small tune somewhere in R2, I do wonder if these sales could inadvertently nudge Konami towards some re-releases somewhere down the line? I suppose only time will tell. 

 Another thing that makes this release so exciting is that this actually marks both a first-time international release of the soundtrack as a whole [since there was only a CD release in Japan following the game's debut] and an actual vinyl for the game itself. Pictured above is a bootleg vinyl that had been sold all around for a good while. Don't look into this release, though. The audio quality is said to be quite shoddy. 

This release, however, as stated NUMEROUS times on the official website where you can pre-order this release, it's stated that these iterations of the numerous memorable tunes are being taken from a new set of original-hardware recordings. Whether if this means Chikuma's tearing open the original masters and re-running them through something or grabbing an N64 of her own and meticulously making sure these sound as good as they potentially can is something that has yet to be seen. Unlike the NES recordings, which are about as good as they can get, no matter what recording software is used because of their 'baked into hardware' nature, I doubt anything Hero has was done that way. 

Do expect a review of sorts when this comes out to act as a comparison. I may also draw comparison to a fanmade remaster of the soundtrack using higher-quality versions of the original samples that made the rounds a few years back.