Review by Brian_McInnis

This game got a rather poor reception from critics when it came out, largely due to its 'unpolished' nature and probably also to its not especially exciting or dynamic cut-scenes and story line in general (I think those last two in particular are highly overrated elements for a video game, but anyway). The other problem of course was that its main audience was Bomberman fans, and no previous Bomberman game was anything like an action platformer. The aggregate ratings it has today are actually not bad at all. Basically average. Gamefaqs and Backloggd both have it at 3.5 out of 5. As for moiself, it's gradually grown and grown in my estimation over the twenty years since I picked it up, and at this point I've come to regard it as one of the greatest games I've ever played.

It's an unusual situation admittedly. The game isn't deep in the senses that the other games in my pantheon tend to be. The thing I started noticing was that it seemed to have just unlimited replay value for me. For one thing it's extremely, extremely fun. Throwing bombs in arcs is a mode of combat very unusual to see in games and Bomberman has this sort of moonwalk jump and it makes just going through the game a whole lotta fun. That and the superb and highly unusual, weirded-out technoesque score by Jun Chikuma, a renowned figure in Musicland especially as a composer of Arabic music.

The structure of the game is a refreshing (especially for the time) throw-back to 2D games that were made of oodles of short levels, and this really seemed to fly in the face of the N64 platformers I was seeing at the time - Mario 64, the Banjo games, Donkey Kong 64 - almost all of which had a handful or so of huge levels that took for ever to get through (and in most of these games the levels all seemed to be basically round and with a great big towering structure in the centre). And the rest - whether it was the Zelda games, Bomberman 64, Quest 64, Jet Force Gemini - everything was just goddamn huge and took ages to get through and had no end of secrets you had to collect if you wanted to unlock the final world or whatever.

So by contrast the bite-sized-to-smallish levels in Bomberman Hero are really fun to bounce quickly along through (there are secrets and a hidden final world in Hero too, but it's not the same when it's little bitty levels somehow. Trust me on this). There are seventy-seven levels in the game's story mode and the amazing thing is that all of them have their own shape (each one's got you running, climbing, winding around in a different direction) and their own visual palette and their own ideas and quirks going on. That's probably one main reason the game doesn't get old for me. And still more variety's added through Bomberman's four vehicular transformations (plus a couple rides on Louie's back).

And the 'unpolished' quality only makes it more charming and unique. A stripped-down polygonal world is of course a stylization in itself even if it's not by intention. I've seen many shots of beta-version N64 and GameCube games that look more mysterious and alluring than the finished products. And the lower-density graphics just make the game that much lighter and quicker and more fun to play. Bomberman Hero's one of gaming's great overlooked - and unexpected - masterpieces.