Just come off some 8-player Saturn Bomberman because who needs to eat, and noticed in the Bomber Catcher bonus game an item that looks like a pair of angry eyes. At first, I didn't really register it, until one of my mates asked, "What do the eyes do?"
I could still roughly remember what it looked like, and just figured it was a Tyra, but surely if it was that'd be represented by an egg?? Any confirmation on what these evil blue-skinned dino-eyes are is greatly appreciated. Curiosity is killing me.
Oh man, judging from the name, image, and fact it's only in Wide Mode, where Tyras are unavailable... it's GOTTA be some Gojira-sized Tyra that stomps around the field in the next match. Damn, I wish we'd got it!
In any case, you got me curious about this, so I went ahead and played and snatched one. Once the little Bomber Catcher claw had grabbed the plushie containing a Bomura prize, the Bomberman head's eyes turned into X's, and a terrible roaring sound occurred.
Then, almost a minute into play, this happened:
Woah, okay. It's flying in from the side.
Predictably, it lands in the center of the screen.
Upon landing, it begins walking rather slowly in a line, breaking apart any Soft Blocks that are in its path of destruction.
Holy shit! It's shooting lasers!
Someone blasted it right before that happened, but Bomura shrugged off the fire like it was nothing.
The laser spans seven tile spaces, I believe, and causes hellfire to emerge upon those spaces for a while.
Bomura itself appears to take damage when it is blasted, but I and the CPU players were only able to deal it about six hits before Sudden Death began, at which point Bomura flew off stage and out of our lives forever.
So yeah. That was pretty badass. I'll try to grab its sprites sometime.
Hahahah, well, that's true. :P But I really didn't have the time to concoct all of these sprites so quickly.
In any case, I studied Bomura's behavior some more, and put up an entry on the Bomberman Wiki. The effects of the item and Bomura's behavior are described more or less in full.
Oh man, thanks for documenting this! I'd been trying to see Bomura in action myself a while back, but for a supposed 'bad' item, I wasn't bad enough to actually grab it in the crane game. :/
(you'd think for a radical threat like that, they'd try and highlight it a little more. make a mode based around it, at least!)
What?! You already ripped his sprites? Well, shit. And I was so close, too. Lol.
(...Would you mind telling me how you did that so quickly? I just disabled the background layers and used the screenshot key to take lots of pics quickly. There isn't some alternate means of ripping sprites from Saturn games, is there?)
As for documenting it, no problem. I thoroughly enjoy studying these games. And yeah, it's too bad that it only happens at a rare chance.
I've done a few rips from Saturn Bomberman, but I couldn't have done it without the Yabause emulator - its savestates can be opened in tile viewers (like GGD), so all the loaded graphics are there to be found. Graphics start somewhere around the middle of the file, palettes around decimal address 2997760.
They're organised in 'linear' or '2D' mode, so there's usually very little assembling (Bomura just required pegging his propellor head onto a few frames), it just requires a bit of stretching and squashing until they look right. Depends on the object, really - players and basic enemies seem simple enough, but bosses have all sorts of separate parts and pieces.
Hahahah, wow. I just checked your site; I didn't realize that you've also done the playable characters. I wish I had known about Yabause before - I had been taking multiple screenshots to piece together Bomberman's unobscured face while lifting bombs, and stuff like that.
If you guys are ripping a bunch of Saturn Bomberman sprites, at least one of you should definitely submit some of your work to The Spriters Resource at some point.
On another note, since I'm already looking at the Saturn Bomberman manuals, I decided to look into the Merger (Gattai) item. I'm sure that people who get the chance to play Saturn Bomberman with people are familiar with this item, but it's totally new to me. Here's what I learned about it. Going to check out the Marble Bomb (mistranslated as "Bead Bomb" in the English manual) next.
Edit: Bead Bomb is up now as well.. Seems like those are the only unique items to cover. Now I'll be returning to the stuff that I actually need to be doing.
The Merge item makes the Skull look like a Heart. Nobody collects it; we all try to trick each other into getting it, and then immediately rush to touch the person with it so we can invincibly piggyback on them.
...The bit about pressing B to initiate the merge was news to me, in my copy at least all the flashing character has to do is touch someone.
But then, my copy also has a stage exit which restarts the console and traps you in the sound test until you turn it off, so.
Hmm, you are quite correct. The B Button does not need to be pressed. Somehow I misinterpreted the manuals' descriptions and carried over that misinterpretation while testing in the game. Thanks for correcting me there.
Also, hahah, that bit about piggybacking sounds like a great way to turn the item's intended use on its head.
that bit about piggybacking sounds like a great way to turn the item's intended use on its head
My friends and I don't play many video games, but we've played the few we do *so* much we've pretty much completely broken them. >_> Makes me wish Saturn Bomberman could be played online, since I'd love to see how our various tricks would stack up.
Glad I could vicariously contribute to the Wiki, too!!
Search Forum
Member List
Chat
Control Panel
Private Messages
Register
Log in
