How Are Hudson Bomberman Controllers?

[cicada88]

For the classic Bomberman games on various systems, Hudson often made their own controllers to pair with multitaps. Anyway, these always have Turbo switches.

Are Turbo switches particularly useful in Bomberman for some reason, or do they just add them because it was a popular feature back then?

Also, if anyone has used one how are the Super Joycards for Super Famicom and the Saturn S-Bom Joycards in general? I've always wondered if ASCII pads and Super Joycards were
actually manufactured by Nintendo and just licensed out. They look almost identical as far as materials, but I've never held them side by side with an original SNES/SFC controller.

[kitten]

i have a couple of saturn s-bom joypads and really like them. surprisingly comfortable and really good for a diversity of autofire toggling. i picked a few up as a novelty to have alongside the s-bom multitap and saturn bomberman, but they're worth using outside of the game and solid controllers. iirc the controller has some weird hidden function with saturn bomberman, but i don't know what it is. my roommate might, though! iirc it's documented somewhere online and shouldn't be too hard to find.

re: why they have the autofire toggles - hudson was super popularly known in japan for their joycard line of controllers for the famicom, which iirc were the first autofire controllers for the console. they're great pads and have quite the reputation overseas. takahashi meijin was a pro gamer sponsored by hudson who was somewhat of a celebrity to children at the time, and was really known for his mashing ability of getting 16 presses per second (i believe he was nicknamed "16shot"). the controllers boasted that same ability and he helped sell them to quite the success.

as for autofire in bomberman - it doesn't really help at all, but autofiring was very much like, the hudson thing before bomberman even came along. the pc engine was a joint between NEC and hudson and also had that autofire toggle built into the staggeringly vast majority of controllers.

[Mortificator]

Super Bomberman 2 though 5 all have a couple of locked battle mode stages that are intended to be unlocked via the autofire setting on a Hudson Super Joy Card. It's like an early example of on-cart DLC.

Even though they didn't sell the controllers outside Japan, the stages were still locked in the US version of Super Bomberman 2, though a Game Genie could enable them.

[Ajora]

The PC Engine Bomberman titles are much, much better than any of the Super Famicom titles. Bomberman 93 and 94 are must plays.

[cicada88]

Thanks for all the information guys. That's cool about the hidden maps or features when used with the Hudson controllers.

I did find out that at least for the Ascii Super Famicom/SNES pads, they were built by Misumi who also built the controllers for Nintendo.

Judging by the looks, the Super Joycards probably were too.

Another thing is that the original Nintendo Super Famicom controller's cords were super short, but I believe both the Ascii & Hudson had 6'+ cords, which is another benefit
especially for Multitap setups.

[Mortificator]

The PC Engine Bomberman titles are much, much better than any of the Super Famicom titles. Bomberman 93 and 94 are must plays.

Plain old PCE Bomberman is typical of the tedium this series consisted of for almost the first decade of its existence. Campaign is unremarkable rectangle after unremarkable rectangle with only a single boss. Battle mode only has one stage and basic power-ups.

'93 is the first Bomberman to approach competence, and '94 is the first to reach greatness and make last year's girl completely obsolete. The only SNES game on par with '94 is Super Bomberman 2. Super Bomberman 5 can match that pair in battle mode, but not campaign. The other Super games are lower in quality, though only SB3 falls below '93.

[cicada88]

The PC Engine Bomberman titles are much, much better than any of the Super Famicom titles. Bomberman 93 and 94 are must plays.

Plain old PCE Bomberman is typical of the tedium this series consisted of for almost the first decade of its existence. Campaign is unremarkable rectangle after unremarkable rectangle with only a single boss. Battle mode only has one stage and basic power-ups.

'93 is the first Bomberman to approach competence, and '94 is the first to reach greatness and make last year's girl completely obsolete. The only SNES game on par with '94 is Super Bomberman 2. Super Bomberman 5 can match that pair in battle mode, but not campaign. The other Super games are lower in quality, though only SB3 falls below '93.

i.e. This Ranking?:

- Saturn Bomberman (SS)
- Bomberman '94 (PCE)
- Super Bomberman 2 (SFC)
- Super Bomberman 5 (SFC)

----THRESHOLD-OF-GREATNESS----

- Super Bomberman 4 (SFC)
- Super Bomberman (SFC)
- Bomberman '93 (PCE)

----THRESHOLD-OF-COMPETENCE----

- Super Bomberman 3 (SFC)
- Bomberman (PCE)


Discuss.

[kitten]

re: pce and sfc era bomberman...

super bomberman 2 has the best campaign of any of the sfc games, imho, but it really suffers as it goes on for leaning way too heavily on increasingly unfun gimmicks (fuck the nearly invisible mines so much) and ends up still being fairly disappointing. 93 and 94 for the pce are probably the leaders of the single player experience, tbh - i don't think either is strictly better than the other, but 94 is probably the most extravagant of any of those games. my big problem with 94 is that high hp enemies are a little too common - i don't quite consider it to make 93 obsolete as mortificator does.

[Steamflogger Boss]

I love 93 and 94. The only two I need.

Maybe I should try some sfc entries though.

[Mortificator]

The PC Engine Bomberman titles are much, much better than any of the Super Famicom titles. Bomberman 93 and 94 are must plays.

Plain old PCE Bomberman is typical of the tedium this series consisted of for almost the first decade of its existence. Campaign is unremarkable rectangle after unremarkable rectangle with only a single boss. Battle mode only has one stage and basic power-ups.

'93 is the first Bomberman to approach competence, and '94 is the first to reach greatness and make last year's girl completely obsolete. The only SNES game on par with '94 is Super Bomberman 2. Super Bomberman 5 can match that pair in battle mode, but not campaign. The other Super games are lower in quality, though only SB3 falls below '93.

i.e. This Ranking?:

- Saturn Bomberman (SS)
- Bomberman '94 (PCE)
- Super Bomberman 2 (SFC)
- Super Bomberman 5 (SFC)

----THRESHOLD-OF-GREATNESS----

- Super Bomberman 4 (SFC)
- Super Bomberman (SFC)
- Bomberman '93 (PCE)

----THRESHOLD-OF-COMPETENCE----

- Super Bomberman 3 (SFC)
- Bomberman (PCE)


Discuss.

If I consider campaign and battle mode separately...

5-star battle modes
Bomberman '94
Super Bomberman 2
Super Bomberman 5
Saturn Bomberman
Bomberman Generation
Bomberman Jetters Game Collection
Bomberman Story DS
Bomberman Land Touch 2
Bomberman 2 [DS]

4-star battle modes
Super Bomberman
Super Bomberman 4
Bomberman 64
Saturn Bomberman Fight
Bomberman Party Edition
Bomberman Tournament
Bomberman Live

3-star battle modes
Bomberman '93
Bomberman GB 2
Super Bomberman 3
Bomberman Jetters Densetsu
Bomberman Jetters [GC]
Bomberman Land [PSP]
Bomberman Live Battlefest

2-star battle modes
Atomic Bomberman
Bomberman World [PS1]
Bomberman 64: The Second Attack
Bomberman Online [Dreamcast]
Bomberman Online International
Bomberman [DS]
Bomberman [PSP]
Bomberman Act Zero
Bomberman Land Touch
Bomberman Land [Wii]
Bomberman Blast

1-star battle modes
Bomber Boy
Bomberman [PCE]
Bomberman [arcade]
Bomberman World [arcade]
Bomberman II [NES]
Bomberman GB
Neo Bomberman
Bomberman Quest

This is without taking online play into consideration; the ones that supported it would probably be a tier higher when it was active. Oh, and I'm not implying anything by the order within a tier.

5-star campaigns
Bomberman '94
Super Bomberman 2
Saturn Bomberman
Bomberman GB 3
Bomberman 64: The Second Attack
Bomberman 2 [DS]

4-star campaigns
Bomberman GB 2
Bomberman 64
Super Bomberman 5
Bomberman Quest
Bomberman Tournament
Bomberman Generation

3-star campaigns
Bomberman [arcade]
Bomberman World [arcade]
Bomberman '93
Super Bomberman
Super Bomberman 4
Bomberman World [PS1]
Bomberman Max
Bomberman Jetters Densetsu
Sentai Bombermen

2-star campaigns
Bomber Boy
Bomberman [PCE]
Super Bomberman 3
Saturn Bomberman Fight
Neo Bomberman
Bomberman Online [Dreamcast]
Bomberman Max 2
Bomberman Jetters [GC]
Bomberman [DS]
Bomberman [PSP]

1-star campaigns
Bomberman [MSX]
3-D Bomberman
Bomberman [NES]
Bomberman II [NES]
Bomberman GB
Atomic Bomberman
Bomberman Party Edition
Bomberman Act Zero
Bomberman Story DS

I say "campaign," but what I really mean is any dedicated singleplayer or co-op modes with traditional Bomberman gameplay. That includes stuff like Saturn's master game and GB 3's caravan modes.