Bomberman Channel

  Once more, the lesser-known spinoff of Bomberman receives new life internationally through a now completed subbing process. Much to the surprise of many, one of the Anglosphere's oldest Bomberman archivists, Steamy Jimmy, actually came through with his promise to sub the entirety of B-Daman Bakugaiden's anime run (Bakugaiden IV and V). For context, the project's prospects were called into question when his uploads of IV's subbed episodes (and subsequently channel) were nuked around the end of 2023. For a second, it was even wondered by many if those uploads were archived or not, and thankfully they were.  For some quick context, the B-Daman series of marble-shooting toys actually started here. Around 1992 or '93, toy producer Takara and Hudson Soft collaborated to create these things, initially as loose tie-ins to games like Super Bomberman , which had just been released at the time. Starting in October 1996, the toyline would become one of the series' first s...

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 se...

 Bombergirl returns yet again with another new character, further confirming Konami's insane self-awareness of both itself and its many franchises, both new and old, for this addition easily has the strangest origin of them all by far. I'm a month late again, I know. Described as the maiden of the Karasuba Shrine and a demon [yokai] hunter with the blood of the Karasuten Sutei, this otherwise fairly cheerful and incredibly tall (clocking in at 220cm, or 7 feet fall) woman uses her family's techniques and her body to engage in battle and protect her village. If she isn't tending to her shrine, then she's playing with the children who visit it. It also appears, however, that she has a dark side to her, with a few quotes referring to a more gluttonous (though to what extent is left to the imagination, given her usage of the word cute) side referring to eating people, especially her master with their demon blood and their organs up. Being of the blocker class, she uses ...

  Bombergirl continues with yet another new character, though with a somewhat surprising twist. ...and as in 'twist', I really mean Konami doing the thing many English fans were expecting them to do to begin with: add more girls based off of Bomberman characters. Anyway, meet Dark, a character based off of Regulus- specifically his Bomberman 64: The Second Attack counterpart.  (I started writing this back in April, then admittedly forgot about it prior to earlier today) His Bomberman 64 appearance His Bomberman 64: The Second Attack appearance Having come from space to take on Shiron, the fill-in for Jetters' version of Bomberman, she's someone who wants to take on the strongest person in the room and be recognized by everyone. Being a literal kid here, though, her big words and declarations of being the best are immediately shrugged off by literally everyone.  Alongside her is her partner, Rabbidel, which she sees as both a pet of sorts and a weapon. It's design is...

In an unexpected turn of events, Konami pulls a power move and buys back the rights to the B-Daman Bakugaiden anime. Credit: Kaleidoskopical (I just needed a spread for this article, okay?) I'm unsure if this is anything I've ever outwardly acknowledged, so if not-- Konami has been surprising me with their numerous callbacks to legacy Bomberman content. I suppose it makes sense, given the series' better reception in Japan. For whatever reason, I mostly figured they were just going to treat the series as some cash cow they could pump a bunch of half-baked games and glorified live-services out of... which, to be fair, isn't wholly untrue. Anyway, up until now, the first major Bomberman spinoff (because Robowarrior/Bomber King and any tertiary connections to Lode Runner more or less died off after two or three games), B-Daman Bakugaiden, was more or less stuck in some legal limbo with Hudson Soft refusing to do much with it in their latter years. Resultingly, they were mor...

  So, I COMPLETELY forgot to write about this as it happened. Also, that write-up on the R2 news is coming soon, don't kill me

  As if out of complete nowhere, more pieces of rare developmental information about the Bomberman series have finally come to light, and I'm all here for it. A channel I haven't been aware of until more recently is one titled C62-Hu.  Run by a former employee of Hudson Soft who I'm guessing was around for a good while, he's uploaded a few videos talking about the company and recalling his days there. I had come by his Hudson Soft HQ exploration videos sometime before, but initially brushed it off as some guy breaking into an old building. Anyway, as of late, he's been looking into scrounging up some old documents about certain games and providing nuggets of info about certain games. One of them in particular was Saturn Bomberman. For some context going into this, I'm unsure if I've ever stated this before, but we actually know next to nothing about the development of too many games. To my knowledge, the most we know about these days are Bomberman Live: Batt...

  On April 10th, 2023 (or 9th in other places), Konami would dump a bunch of info about the game in a new trailer and the opening of a website proper after half a year of nothing! Because there's just so much to talk about, I'm going to break everything down into a bunch of sections before breaking off to editorialize for a bit, visiting one or two other topics, and wrapping everything up. 1.) The trailer itself: Taken from IGN The trailer itself doesn't really show much that's new. The only really noteworthy thing here is that we now get to see the enhanced graphics and improved assets in other modes, including the story mode. Additionally, we learn that Castle Mode has received a major gameplay change. In initial media, we only saw player protecting the fortress while 15 others came after your treasure. Seen both here and on the website, it's now stated that up to 16 players are divided into two teams, meaning that there's now more than one person on the defen...

  With Hudson Soft's unfortunate closure back in 2012 following talks of becoming a subsidiary of partner Konami came an erasure of their immediate legacy. After the Wii U era, as many of us have since seen, we haven't seen too many of their IPs actually return. No, seriously.  It seems like ALL of the Hudson Soft franchises that weren't either Bomberman, or to a very light extent, Momotaro Dentetsu. None of their titles have gotten any re-releases or anything. Certainly not helping is what I've heard around about numerous of Hudson Soft's employees bailing ship in the months prior to their closure, including numerous big figures like the Kudo brothers or Yoshiyuki ('Takahashi') Meijin. If you're someone like me who really cares about the lasting legacy of a series, as well as the overall artistic integrity of a product, then the current state of Bomberman, as I've gone over numerous times before, has been a very sobering one.  Additionally, when mos...