The Best Spots to Find Bomberman Info [EDITORIAL]

For as long as the civilized world has existed, there's always been a need to bring together large clusters of information about what's around us. But how many of these can we really trust?

Through tablets, word of mouth (I guess), and eventually books, we have always been putting together some repository of everything we know about, well, everything. This has it's clear benefits, such as allowing people to find answers to whatever questions they have and generally contributing to the preservation of culture, especially when a diverse set of perspectives are brought into the picture. From written encyclopedias of older days to the online wikipedias most teachers complain about, there's always been an issue, however, with what guidelines to put in place and what that means for a publication's legitimacy. 

This much especially applies to any fanmade 'wiki' dedicated to specific media franchises. Because fandoms are bound to have a plethora of people who may see things a bit differently, not everyone's going to agree with each other. There are also those who love to cause chaos and watch the world burn... or children who just don't know better. It's a bit hard to tell sometimes, but the result is always some kind of misinformation getting out and being spread even further by people who aren't savvy of the series in question. A few examples of this come to mind, such as the Kirby wiki (not Wikirby), the Astro Boy wiki, and, if the title is anything to go by, then the Bomberman wiki.

Yes, I'm going there.

Because the series is already a bit more niche than most, not everyone has had the ability to get to know much about it, which also allows for all kinds of false info to get out.
While much of the blame for many of the misconceptions about Bomberman mostly lie at the feet of anyone who published the earlier titles in the west and uninformed critics, I'd also throw some flack the way of those who claim to want to spread info, then only use surface-level sources as part of their research (not that I have any personal experience in doing that, unfortunately). Another issue on top of this as well is the lack of info that stems from roughly 60-75% of the series remaining Japanese-exclusive, even today. Note how most people who discuss the series only ever bring up the first NES title, maybe Super Bomberman 1 and 2, "Wario Blast", and then do a abrupt skip forward in time to Bomberman 64 and Hero. Maybe you'll get some coverage of the Max games, Jetters, Generation, make jokes about Act Zero, and a few Land titles if they feel cute enough. But ask them about something like Online for the Dreamcast and/or Fantasy Race and they'll probably look at you like you just shot their dog, or Louie, if we're staying on brand.

This then leads to empty, barely substantiated, or even proofread pages about certain topics or maybe the odd good one about something a little more obscure getting trashed by mindless speculation or rumors being presented like they're facts in the trivia section. Either that, or said speculation will be peppered throughout the entry itself with either dubious sources being cited or sometimes just NONE AT ALL.

Instance of an early episode entry

Instance of an early episode entry [2]

Instance of a later episode entry

Or what about the, and I'm going to get a little more specific here, episode entries of shows like Bomberman Jetters, for instance, going from fairly decent descriptions with those nice panel things showing some image, an episode number, and maybe even a title off to the side to mostly blank pages full of ramble-y journal entries writhe with grammatical errors that are, frankly, hard to read? Or what about pages that'll have entries with certain terms- marked in red- that lead to a nonexistent one entirely?

I've heard horror stories about a general lack of quality control, with a strange insistence on free speech and a big number of pages instead being the standard, much to the confusion of those who have spoken to me and, well, me. Good pages and contributors absolutely exist, rest assured, but it can be a bit discouraging to even try to make new entries or changes to pre-existing ones if you feel like you'll wake up one day and find your contributions vandalized somehow. It can, on the other end, be outright frustrating to find out that what you thought was factual was actually fictitious. It brings into question, at least for me, just how seriously one could expect what we love to be taken if one of it's major sources of information constantly undermines itself.

All of this is to say that if you do want to learn more about the series and, obviously, find yourself there, that you should- at least in my opinion- only use it as an initial source before taking your business elsewhere. 

Fortunately, this is where two better wikis- even if one of them isn't necessarily intended to be one- come in. Both made by peers of yours truly, let me introduce you to Bomberpedia and The Totally Bombastic Bomberman Shrine Place. Cool name on that second one, right?

Bomberpedia

A privately-edited wiki with a far tighter grip on quality control, if only become there's one person who updates the actual writing with others occasionally popping in from time to time to upload images and occasionally provide sources. This doesn't just list general info you can find on any old wiki, but extra info like Japanese and English story descriptions, names, and the like. Technical info like power-ups, stage names, stage layouts, and numerous modes can be found as well. Overall, this goes into rather extensive detail about everything you would need to know in as concise a way as possible. You'll even occasionally find details about localization changes or what little we know of any behind the scenes details. You can also find extensive articles on select characters, such as Max, that go into detail about their many depictions and the like.

On top of all this, there are actual sources that are cited and can be found quite easily within the other 'wiki', but more on that shortly. The way the main page is laid out, too, is incredibly intuitive, just being a list of numerous games grouped next to whatever consoles and/or PCs they came out on, making navigation quite easy.

It's easily the best traditional Bomberman wiki out there. There's no insane fluff, filler, or fiction that can be haphazardly spread about. It's also well-written. The only caveat here, though, is that it's far from finished. The person running this hasn't been able to get back to this too much, only having made small updates in bits and pieces since 2021. That means you won't be able to find anything about recent titles (as of writing this) like Super Bomberman R 2.

Totally Bombastic Bomberman Shrine Place

More of a glorified NeoCities page about Bomberman than a wiki that happens to host a GIANT Mega page on the backend chock-full of manga scans, game manual scans, trading cards, pictures of all kinds of merchandise, etcetera, this focuses much more on the various bits of external media with means to access them for the most part. The write-ups on the many games are a bit more opinionated and brief with a few screenshots to accompany them. 

For pieces of external media like the various guidebooks, select pieces of merch, and even interviews that have been put out over a period of time, there are excerpts with archived links and translations- where need be- you can easily access. Various people have contributed to this throughout the years, but the sense of quality control is still a lot higher than you can expect from the Bomberman wiki that appears first on Google.

But again, unfortunately, this also isn't entirely finished, with numerous entries for certain games and the like being missing due to its creator not having the time to keep up a page like this. Still, comparatively, this is definitely a bit more meaty than the otherwise short and sweet Bomberpedia. It also isn't up-to-date, so you won't be seeing R 2 here, either. Incremental updates are made every now and then, though. For this 'wiki', though, it's not hard to even learn about things that aren't immediately accessible, mainly in thanks to that large MEGA page on the backend I mentioned earlier, as well as the numerous uploads of media by people like Sora G. Silverwind across the old Bomberboards (that's not just a pun, but actually the name of the most active forum today) or sites like Archive.org. 

To anyone from the Bomberman wiki who may be reading this, I think the time's come to get a better grip on how things are run and maybe open up to the idea of ensuring your contributors are capable of putting together something comprehensive or at least form a community of those who're able to proofread each other's works and implement some kind of correction wherever necessary. In a way, even if it may sound a bit corny or melodramatic, if we want to improve the standing of the IP we claim to unite over, then one way to do so is to establish an actual forum with set standards instead of rogue entities acting independently with varying motives regardless of any potential for conflict or disagreement. That bit of feedback applies to Konami, too. If we do this, then maybe we'll be able to established a unified front of fans who can speak up and actually get things moving with the series.

I've been meaning to actually get some kind of discussion going about the series on more of a meta level and do more than discuss the news, and I figured pointing to some aspect of the community, fractured or otherwise, would be a good place to start. While these are absolutely the places to look in my opinion, what do you all make of this? Are there any wiki contributors reading this who may think differently than me? I'm very interested in hearing what you all think in one way or another.

And as always, thanks for having stuck around and I'm sorry- yet again- that it's taken me this long to update any of this. Next up will be a write-up on the newest Bombergirl character. I also might be able to do more uploads on the YouTube channel soon, though only time will tell there. Either way, stay tuned to the Bomberman Channel for all things Bomberman news, reviews, and discussion. Until next time, I'll catch you all on the other side of the boom!