A rare Bomberman title that was only available for events and on certain show floors has now been re-found, thanks to well-known former Hudson executive Takahashi Meijin, whom you may know of as Master Higgins from Adventure Island.
Originally, the game was made for custom hardware that also used early HD TV screens, and featured the ability to have up to 10 players at once on widescreen. Here’s a look at the gameplay below:
With such a large screen to clear, it was only fair that one match lasted only one game. A fun fact is that according to Bomberman series fan archive Tadabomland, the game could be rented for play at Japanese TV channel NHK’s studio, for 500,000 yen for two days. The game also had an original item called the Detonation Switch, which only appeared once per match, which let players detonate bombs anytime before the 3-second timer ran out.
The game even got an upgraded version called Hi-Ten Chara-Bomb, featuring other Hudson characters:
Since the game was featured in limited places in 1993, the game’s been lost in time, until Takahashi Meijin found several discs for the game from his former Hudson days, and since its discs’ discovery, it has been donated to the non-profit organization Game Preservation Society for further studying and hopefully making it playable in some form once again.
Hi-Ten Bomberman was originally available for events, and was never made available for consoles.
