Hey,

For some time I've been reversing Super Bomberman 1 – investigating the code, level formats, how enemies work and so on. One of the things I've learned is how secret bonuses work in the game. During the investigation of the level formats, I've learned that every level has a list of initialization functions, and some levels include a function that takes 2 parameters – a condition (0x00-0x0B) and a bonus (0x0E, 0x11-0x18).

The conditions are:

Condition 0x00: Reach 0 lives.
Condition 0x01: Do not move for 500 frames (21.333 seconds)
Condition 0x02: Stand on the exit for 500 frames (21.333 seconds)
Condition 0x03: Pause the game
Condition 0x04: Place bombs in all 4 corner
Condition 0x05: Leave all bonuses, including the exit, visible
Condition 0x06: Killing 3 enemies with a single bomb or bomb chain, or killing 3 enemies straight using kicked bomb.
Condition 0x07: Bomb the exit
Condition 0x08: Use the Punching Glove 5 times
Condition 0x09: Drop a bomb on the other player or yourself
Condition 0x0A: Have 6 bombs on the field
Condition 0x0B: Have a player's score end with 20

The bonuses can be actually anything from 0x00 to 0x18, but they're practically only the Heart bonus, Question Mark bonus (Selects a random bonus. If the selected bonus is the exit, poison or question mark bonus it defaults to extra life) and the score-only bonuses. The exit is considered a bonus with ID 0x10.

The bonuses are:
0x01: Extra Bomb
0x02: Extra Fire
0x03: Remote Control
0x04: Extra Speed
0x05: Shield
0x06 Extra Life
0x07: Pass through bombs
0x08: Pass through walls
0x09: Extra Time
0x0A: Full Fire
0x0B: Red Bombs
0x0C: Kick
0x0D: Punch
0x0E: Onigiri
0x0F: Poison
0x10: Exit
0x11: Heart
0x12: Cake
0x13: Question Mark
0x14: Hammer
0x15: Apple
0x16: Fire Extinguisher
0x17: Popsicle
0x18: Ice cream

I uploaded a video demonstrating these conditions, I hope you'll enjoy it! :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrKehQ3DXAY

I'll post more of the stuff I've been doing in the Mods section later. :)

Oh wow, I've never even heard of these secrets before! I'd always assumed the secret condition bonus items vanished after the PC Engine games. That's a really neat discovery. (I really ought to start translating those game guides and see if there's more stuff like this I've never heard of!)

I wonder if The Cutting Room Floor would be interested in this. It's not unused, but they do cover ultra-obscure or rarely-discussed secrets like this.

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I knew about conditions 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 and A the others are new to me :)
(Ask Gladers, I annoyed the crap out of him by pausing on every single level in the game)

What does the fine print for the question mark say? (It's so tiny! And the background doesn't help)

The hammer, if I'm not mistaken, is a kendama.
The Fire Extinguisher doesn't just give you points, it maxes out your extra lives :)

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

I assumed it wasn't a hammer, but I had no clue what kendama is. :P
The fine print says what I've posted in this post: if the selected random bonus is Poison, Exit, or Question Mark, the bonus defaults to extra life. (Which makes the extra life bonus 4 times more common).

I realized I was wrong about the fire extinguisher bonus only after I posted the video, though. :(

Anyway, I'm now comparing the Japanese ROM to the International one to find removed content. It appears to be quite problematic because the two ROMs use different address formats, and on the top of that, the data locations are no longer the same. Most of the functions, however, remained in the same place.

Basically, I'm developing modding tools to SBM1, but I'll post more on this in the Mods forum. :)

Oh? There's More they removed besides the intro?

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

That's what I'm trying to find out. :)
There are definitely code changes between the Japanese and International version, I just have to figure out what are they exactly. I also assume that the Japanese version has more unused content than the International one – i.e. if there were graphics for an unused enemy, it might have been removed in the international version, so it would pop out in the diff.

Wow! This is quite interesting! Good work!

I don't believe that the official guidebook for the game even covers this. I thumbed through it extensively back when I was gleaning it for information. So it is rather awesome that you've been able to figure this out.  

It appears that the Power Zone had soft blocks in an earlier development version. The graphics for it were removed (Adding them back by editing level data shows them as black squares), but the bonus data is still available. It had 10 Poison bonuses, and, surprisingly, one Remote Control bonus.

Now that is truly unexpected. I don't have any more input, but I'll definitely be keeping tabs on this topic.

I must say, it's always fun when someone starts disassembling a game to see what's there. Always something interesting shows up. Sadly I don't have the patience to poke around much myself, but.

I imagine the Super Secret ride-able beer cans none of us ever got in the US edition will become clear in the code...

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