@physical and I were chatting the other day about how amazing the Bomberman 64 soundtrack was. It’s hard to compare them but I do think Hero’s better overall, but like, nothing really sounds like these OSTs, they’re just fantastic:
My main Bomberman memories are of being extremely psyched by the release of Atomic Bomberman on the PC, which meant I could play it via LAN with my brothers and friends.
Now this game plays and sounds and looks like complete ass, but, it was just cool to play it on the computer.
Bomberman Quest, and to a lesser extent Bomberman Max, were complete delights for me and the first time I felt like Bomberman could actually extend itself outside of the fugging grid. All the mechanics are there! You can do anything with them! You can do a Links Awakening if you’re so bold!
I did feel like Max was a crazy strange misstep in terms of character design, but like, Bomberman never REALLY figured out its style. Nobody else but Bomberman looks like him, which is extremely strange. This gave the series this vibe of not being a “real” series, like it wasn’t well considered and they were just throwing shit at the wall, which isn’t untrue but it is also what most other properties were doing, and them not having a consistent visual style felt like they really wanted this to not be Bomberman.
Bomberman 64 on the other mitt DID feel Bomberman as hell, even with all the overcool sentai villains all over the place, and I clearly clearly remember this being one of those videogames that caterpiller-age Mothra was fucking obsessed with:
I simply couldn’t believe how much SHIT was in this game, you could go through entire city blocks and unlock new costumes and fight a huge variety of unique bosses, all to that banger soundtrack. As an N64 game it of course looks like true horsepiss now but man, this was a game that genuinely amazed me as a youngling.
Multiplayer also absolutely ripped, played a whole lot of Bomberman 64 at sleepovers and the like.
Also notable is this cute SNES multitap I picked up years back for Secret of Mana:
Now sadly Secret of Mana ended up sucking pretty bad but this multitap is a prized possession of mine all the same.
My last offering is related to the soundtrack again:
About a year and a half back the company I was working for launched this robotics site at a very high-visibility location across from the HQ of our client, and all hands were on deck to just make sure it all went well. Everyone had to cycle through and fly down there to keep the site running well. When it was my turn, I did an overnight shift in the Frozen section, where we were within a giant freezer, opening up boxes and loading the product into totes for the robots to receive.
The locals I worked the shift with brought in a Spy Kids-ass bluetooth speaker and asked if I was good with them playing music while they worked, I of course said yes, they then proceeded to play the Bomberman 64 soundtrack while we worked our way through three pallets of cases. I’ll never forget what an insanely improbably music choice that was.