The "Mega Bomberman" version is far worse than the original PCE version (Bomberman '94), in my opinion. The graphics, sounds, and music are all compressed and thus are pretty bad in comparison. You should try the PCE version instead, if you can - actually, the PCE version's graphics are more detailed than those of Super Bomberman 3. You can even buy it on the Wii U and Playstation Network if that's your thing.

Bomberman '94 has its faults, but then, so does Super Bomberman 3. I'm not really sure if one of them is better. I will say that the three final bosses of Bomberman '94 are far more challenging than the two in Super Bomberman 3, so the game is better in that regard for sure.

Personally, I prefer Super Bomberman 3, but that's mainly due to nostalgia and my own preference for the villain characters (and Battle Game maps/characters/items). I think Bomberman '94 holds its own though.

Not everybody uses them; I'm just trying to cover all bases.

Early Bomberman games have so little text (and some of it is already English), and the menus are so simple, that the language barrier is no real issue.

Yeah, there's a Remote Control in the first half of stage 2-4. It must have been accidentally destroyed during your run. If I remember correctly, both the volcano and the trolley can destroy items.

The PC Engine and the TurboGrafx-16 are basically the same console. Hudson Soft helped create it; it was known as the PC Engine in Japan. In the west, it was renamed to the TurboGrafx-16.

It's like how the Super Nintendo was originally called the Super Famicom in Japan. We just rebranded it in the west.

Mega Bomberman is the only official Bomberman game for the Sega Genesis. That's... probably for the best. Another problem with the Mega Bomberman version that I forgot to mention is that it only allows up to 4 human players in the Battle Game, while the PCE version allows up to 5. It's just all-around an inferior port, and it's a little sad that it's the version that most people outside of Japan have played.

...the enemies are still random cowboys and crying faces...

Hahah, welcome to old-school Bomberman. The NES game had you fighting off balloons, onions, and disembodied tiger heads.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Do they fit? Or do they only seem to fit because we're so used to them being there? Tigers and onions don't really have anything to do with a factory that manufactures bombs (nor do they have much to do with many of the other environments in which they've appeared over the years).

Pre-SNES Bomberman games largely just had random animals and strange monsters with little in common with their environments. They were very abstract things like blobs that cry when you blast them or frilly mouths that chomp repeatedly. Bomberman '93 and Bomberman '94 were taking the series' very first fledgling steps into more diverse and structured design, with enemies that were actually unique to certain worlds (and which fit thematically), big bosses that stretched over the screen, and by the time Bomberman '94 appeared, even traps that play into the worlds' environments.

If you look at Bomberman, Bomberman '93, and Bomberman '94, all for the PCE, each released sequentially, you can really get a feel for how these older games were still trying to cling on to the style of NES Bomberman, but were gradually adding and revising elements to refine the gameplay and general aesthetic.

Mega Bomberman was kinda odd in general. Those Battle Mode bombers vanished afterwards, too.

Wait, they have names? That's news for me.