To whomever it may concern,

I've opted to post what I've done so far of my Bomberman timeline:

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dgtkg3hq_6fctxzhf5

It's still a work in progress, as you can see. This is only one aspect of this little project I have going on here. Any sort of help would be much appreciated. I know for sure I'm not the only one who wants to see a legitimate source of Bomberman info out there.

Wow, very nice!  

Panic Bomber World was released before Super Bomberman 3? That's kind of weird that they started using Pretty Bomber already, I thought that started with SB3.

And Bomberman Wars came -after- Bomberman World? O_o So, Bomberman Wars acts like a prequel, instead of Bomberman World being a sequel?

Also, somehow I wasn't aware that it was called Bomberman originally instead of Eric and the Floaters. Neat.

Pretty Bomber isn't in Panic Bomber W. I played the ROM.  

It actually features prototype versions of those multiethnic Bombermen in SB3. For example:

-Mexican Bomber originally had a brown and green color scheme was referred to as Rasta Bomber. His country of origin was Jamaica. No idea why they changed it.

-Bomber the Kid was originally Sheriff Bomber and had a very patriotic outfit, with red, white and blue and stars and stripes and whatnot.

-Metal Bomber was pretty much the same, except he lacked the sunglasses.

-Instead of Bomber Uho from Africa, we had Animal Bomber from Brazil. He looks like a miniature version of Bomber Uho though.

-Lastly, Japan was represented by Karaoke Bomber, who has bushy eyebrows and a kimono. After you beat him you supposedly have to face another opponent but I didn't get that far.

I could grab some screenshots of these if you like.  

Lol, I've played through the whole game before. There are two secret boss fights, and if you beat them then you get to fight the secret final boss (meaning that there are 3 secret bosses in all).

----SPOILERS----
1st - Pretty Bomber
2nd - Shadow Bomber (Kurobon in disguise)
Secret Final Boss - Space Bomber

----END SPOILERS----

Also, it's not Sheriff Bomber, it's Bomb Gunman.

ボンガンマン = Bomb Gunman
And he doesn't have designs or anything, just red white and blue colors.

I have screenshots if you'd like them...

EDIT: Here are the screenshots, all bosses:

http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/1030/panicbomberw.png

The backgrounds aren't edited out because when I did this, I was only doing it for reference. Those two large face shots of Pretty and Kuro are what appear if you beat the game ending with (ball) Bagura, and not defeating the real villain. They're like a clue.

I guess the only plausible explanation for Pretty's appearance is that they were already planning Super Bomberman 3 and Panic Bomber World is supposed to come after SB3. They are only a month or two apart after all. Or they just said screw continuity and wanted to make Pretty Bomber a recurring character.

Wow. You're on the ball. You and I would make a great team in this outing.  

I guess your theory about the rushed release works, but then again maybe they felt they were lacking in female characters and Pretty was their only option, hence why she became a recurring character so frequently.

Still can't understand how she always manages to be there even though she always dies along with the rest of the Evil Five.

Also, is that not-so-final boss really referred to as "Bagura"? He looks more like Baguro from Saturn Bomberman Fight!!.

Knowing Hudson you're probably right, ignore continuity and use characters for whatever. But as someone who likes to keep the plot as organized as possible, I guess my unofficial answer to this would have to be that Panic Bomber World occurs after Super Bomberman 3...

As for the 5 Fiendish Bombers (I don't know, it's 凶悪ボンバ-5人衆よっ which translates as "Fiendish Bomber 5 man group" and the first word 凶悪 can unfortunately mean any assortment of synonyms for "evil", I chose Fiendish since it flows with 5 but who knows)... as for them, I think after SB3 they were revived somehow because they manage to go on two missions to Phantarion, the first we do not see but they are driven away by still-human Max, and the second occurs during Bomberman Story/Tournament. Also, Golem Bomber appears in Saturn Bomberman Fight!!, and according to Bomber D Rufi's translation of the dialouge, they seem to all be running about elsewhere, as Honey says they are wanted. That's just my theory.

As for Baguro, yes Serkol questioned me on that as well but it is definately "Bagura" in-game. バグラ = Bagura. :/ Maybe it's just one of those things they changed later. I'll translate the dialouge some day but I doubt it explains anything. Maybe his bio in Saturn Bomberman Fight!! would explain something.... maybe I'll get on that...

In any case, this is getting very horribly off topic, sorry about that.  

Ah whatever. The more we talk about Bomberman in general the better.

While I'm at it, here is a listing of Bomberman mobile games I found on Hudson's mobile game page:

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dgtkg3hq_3hkhxnbfd

I'm fairly certain the ones that are still on there aren't the only ones they released. Trying to gather data on these is a nightmare.

Here is a list of mobile Bomberman games that I know for sure were released in the US and Europe:

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dgtkg3hq_5k536gmhf

There is veeeeeeery little info on those. Those links I have in there are about the only reliable sources I could find. I'm sure there's even more than the ones listed there as well.

It's also worth noting that I have no way of telling when the Japanese mobile games were released. I tried to order them from most recent to least recent on each genre section as best I could.

The last thing I'm going to post is a personal list of Bomberman games I have not played or own:

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dgtkg3hq_10hnqx7qc2

If there's anybody out there that has any info, screenshots, artwork, or ways I can access the games listed there, it would be much appreciated.  

nicely done
haven't had a full timeline since Bomberman.info wen't down

http://web.archive.org/web/20040805064854/www.bomberman.info/index.php?link=gamelist
i think the entries used to have descriptions, i cant remember, i was 13

Och, mobile games, when we get into that I am automatically lost. Good luck trying to get sufficient info on those. If you need any descriptive text translated, though, I can do that.

As for your third list...

Atomic Bomberman - I played it a long time ago, it was a lot like a third party clone of Bomberman. I was surprised to find out that it was official. In any case I'm sure there is a lot of info on it out there.

Saturn Bomberman Fight!! - Never played it, but I know that a member here is translating the battle dialouge. Bomber D Rufi.

Bomberman Wars - Hudson still has the website up: http://www.hudson.co.jp/gamenavi/gamedb/softinfo/bombwars/index.html
Can't remember if I found that or if someone posted it the other day... >_< In any case I did a quick translation the other day of one of the paragraphs and it seemed to mention "lizard men.

The rest, I know nothing about.

If Panic Bomber World indeed was made before Super Bomberman 3, then that is easily explained: Bagular's look was only finalized in SBMan3. His only prior appearence was in 94, and during the credits (as well as on the map) he does look kind of like this.
So yeah, I'm convinced, PBW most likely came out before SBMan3.

About cellphone games, I have a doc with screenshots I collected from as many as I could find (including rare stuff like Bomberman Baseball and newer ones like Bomberman Deluxe and Bomberman Land Battles).
If you want it, PM me your e-mail.

The puzzloop cellphone games have been removed from all links in your list. Can you show us any picture of them, or describe what they were like?

...oh and good work btw  

_________________
Metroid: Other M - As in "There's the good Metroid games... we chose to do one of some Other Make altogether."

Dammit. Leave to them to take out the last Puzzloop Bomber game within a week of me adding to the list.  

You've ever heard of Puzzloop? It was basically that but with Bomberman piloting the cannon. I remember the Puzzloop Bomber Mini version being similar except the board was smaller and Bomberman had his chibi-fied "Land" art style. I could be wrong though. Sometimes my memory gets fuzzy.

Ah yes, I saw that game for WiiWare, thanks.

_________________
Metroid: Other M - As in "There's the good Metroid games... we chose to do one of some Other Make altogether."

Mmm, I don't really think so... Baguro doesn't have a beard even, and he's much shorter. Bagura (Bagulaa?) from '94 was rather tall, and wore a Bomberman helmet sort of thing. Although his face is similar. In any case, Baguro's bio from Saturn Bomberman Fight!! -definately- mentions Professor Bagura in it, I can see the kana there plain as day. I'll get on that soon.

And Bomberman World... I started thinking about it and I just don't get it, why would it come before Bomberman Wars? Because you clearly see the Dark Force Bombers in their form from Bomberman Wars in the intro, and Bagura changes them into their new forms for Bomberman World. Which implied that we'd already seen them before, like with the Fiendish Bombers.  

It was released before Wars. Says so on the official Hudson website. The English manual certainly mentions that the Dark Force Bombers were sealed away hundreds of years ago. I assume the developers were setting up for a prequel, which is what Wars was.

Strange... kind of unlike them.... I guess, though, it could have been a good way to market a totally different style of Bomberman game - tie in the storyline to a regular Bomberman game.

And I can tell you right now, Baguro is NOT Bagura. He would like to be him, though.  
The second paragraph is considerably longer so I'll do it tomorrow. See the translation topic to continue on that.

There's also the chance that they intitially didn't plan on using those ancient-looking Dark Force Bomber models from the intro for anything until they looked at the battle mode characters and said "Hey, let's make a high fantasy Bomberman game! It can be a StratRPG!".

Doubtful though. Pocket Bomberman was also set in the distant past and starred Soldier Bomber, so I guess they had plans to make a set of games with high fantasy elements. I always kind of wanted them to revisit it. Games like Bomberman Tournament and whatnot would've lent themselves really well to the fantasy setting.

I'm pretty sure it's Hero Bomber or Hero Bomberman.

And I don't know, I doubt that whoever designed the ancient Dark Force Bombers was not aware that the battle mode characters were also medieval/fantasy-esque. It had to be planned. Perhaps somehow Wars got delayed? Meh, these are the sorts of things we'll probably never find the answer to anyway.

I still say they set it up as a prequel.

The protagonist in Pocket Bomberman is clearly Soldier Bomber:



He's just wearing a red cape.

If you look here he appears again in Wars:



Hero Bomber is a separate character entirely, unless that's him in Pocket Bomberman and he worked his way up by the time Wars rolled around.

But, at the end of Pocket Bomberman doesn't he get the shiny armor?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6vwbbTbP-k

To be honest I was unaware that there even was a Soldier Bomber... Although, that looks more like Fighter Bomber to me.

フｱイタ = Fighter

Oh NOW I remember. I thought Pocket Bomberman had an ending like that. So it IS Hero Bomber.

The Soldier/Fighter thing was a mistake on my part.

Still, Hero Bomber was wearing a Fighter's uniform during the events of Pocket Bomberman. He must be the same character after all.