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Bomberman, Bomberman

Mass destruction across the land.

Makes a bomb, any size.

And he's yours, to customize.

—Bomberman 64 commercial

To put it plainly and simply, the Bomberman series is about a deceptively cute-looking robot guy in a white helmet who can produce an endless supply of bombs, and use them to destroy things. Originally, his M.O. was to escape from a bricks-and-mortar dungeon where everything was trying to kill him, but his quest has since evolved into one of saving the galaxy from another race of rogue bombers.

Since its creation by Hudson Soft back in the mid-1980s, it's become almost synonymous with multiplayer madness, as up to four (or in some cases, ten) players can compete against each other and blow each other up. The Bomber's legacy (not the Blue one, BTW) lives on even to this day, as his games have been ported to almost every platform imaginable.

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Contains examples of:

• Americanitis: The PC-only Atomic Bomberman.
• The Anime Of The Game: Bomberman Jetters.
• Better Than It Sounds Video Games
• Big Damn Villains: Regulus/Bulzeeb in The Second Attack. Zoniha is about to kamikaze Bomberman after losing when he shows up and cancels her attack. Then he loudly declares that he's the only one that gets to defeat Bomberman right before making her one with a black hole.
• Bonus Level Of Heaven: Bomberman 64.
• Captain Ersatz: Almost every major character in Bomberman Hero is an expy to a Star Wars character.
  • Bomberman himself is based on the enemies from Lode Runner, appearance-wise.
  • Pommy is an expy to both Kirby and Pikachu.
• Cartoon Bomb
• Cat Girl: Natia from bomberman Hero is a sexilly sadistic example. with weird hair too.
• Chasing Your Tail: The Sphinx-like Bourban in Bomberman Hero has an armored front and a vulnerable tail. In the second battle, both his frontal shield and his breath weapon are disabled, but his missiles are harder to avoid because you're fighting him in an underwater tunnel.
• Combining Mecha: The "Five Bad Bombers" from Super Bomberman 3 enter into/become a large mecha for Bagular to ride after entering a vortex.
  • Combine-3 from Bomberman Max 2.
  • Let's not forget CONSTRUCTOOOOOOOOOOR X in Generations.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Many players prefer the normal battle mode stage.
• The Computer Is A Cheating Bastard
• Contemptible Cover: The U.S. release for the first TurboGrafx Bomberman had this◊ as its cover.
• Continuing Is Painful: When you die, you lose all your powerups.
• Continuity Reboot: Bomberman: Act Zero was meant to take the franchise in a Darker And Edgier direction. It wasn't well-received.
• Creator Backlash: Hudson Entertainment has all but disowned Act Zero.
• Crossover: Wario Blast for the Game Boy (which is actually a dolled-up localization of Bomberman GB).
• Darker And Edgier: Bomberman: Act Zero, a prime example of how this trope can be misused.
• Deadpan Snarker: in Bomberman 64: The Second Attack, Bomberman is revealed to be this in the Good Ending.
• Demonic Spider: There's some weird enemies, but Mantis from Bomberman 64 embodies the trope with her being a giant ice spider with sharp, mantis-like blades on her arms/legs (hence the name I suppose), who spits baby demon spiders from her mouth.
• Destroyable Items: Practically all games in the series. In some games, only good items can be destroyed by accident.
• Do Not Call Me Paul: Regulus in the The Second Attack.
• Double Knockout: Mass-mutual K Os are common in multiplayer, due to the hectic pace of battle.
• Downer Ending: The Bad Ending for Bomberman 64: The Second Attack more or less implies that the universe and all life will be destroyed by the God of Chaos.
• Dummied Out: Atomic Bomberman came with modding tools, making Dummied Out portions of the game easy to find - including unused, profanity-laced vocal taunts.
• Everything Trying To Kill You: Let's see, Mooks, fish, walking bombs, dragons, snowmen, giant spiders, tornadoes, a mystical sorcerer, a male sphinx, a crazy cat, GIANT robots, and many other things, on top of your own bombs and the villians...
• Evil Laugh: Bagular in Hero, Rukifellth in Second Attack, Sirius in Bomberman 64.
• Evil Twin: Black Bomber.
• Expy I'm sorry, but the term Expy has been misused again, and all the examples up here have moved up to the Captain Ersatz entry. TO BE REMOVED AFTER THE POSTER READS THIS NOTE.
• Fake Boss: Altair.
• Face Heel Turn: Sirius in Bomberman 64. He might also be classified as a Manipulative Bastard, seeing as he manipulated Bomberman for the entire course of the game...
• Game Breaker: Judicious use of the Manual Detonator allows you to beat the game with minimal effort. Just try not to accidentally blow yourself up, okay?
  • Add in the immunity to your own blasts power-up in the original game and you're a walking angel of flaming death.
  • Manual Detonator plus Bomb Kicking Shoes, Bomb Throwing Gloves, or Bomb Punching Gloves, equals ranged remote death.
• Giant Spider: Mantis in Bomerman 64.
• Heel Face Turn: Black Bomber. Plasma Bomber almost did in Super Bomberman 2.
  • Regulus (a.k.a. Bulzeeb) twice, (though his latter appearance portrays him more as a neutral rival than an enemy
• Humongous Mecha: Several robotic bosses fall into this trope.
• Intercontinuity Crossover: Wario Blast for the Game Boy, which is a typical Bomberman game with Wario starring alongside the bomber.
• The Jimmy Hart Version: The pre-boss battle music from Bomberman 64: The Second Attack, sounds almost exactly like the James Bond theme. ALMOST!
• Just Between You And Me: Parodied in one of the bonus scenes from Bomberman 64: The Second Attack:
  "It's not much fun making speeches about my plans without an audience..."
• Just Here For Godzilla
• The Left Hand Of Doom: Bomberman had an oversized claw glove on his left hand in Bomberman: Act Zero.
• Lethal Lava Land: Red Mountain.
• Light Is Not Good: The final boss of Bomberman 64.
  • At least 2 bosses from The Second Attack
• Load Bearing Boss: Nearly every final boss in the whole franchise.
• Man On Fire, Infernal Retaliation: One of the skull effects in Bomberman 64 and its sequel set the player on fire and force him to use his body to kill off everyone else before the fire kills him.
• Mirror Boss: The evil bombers, which started showing up in Super Bomberman 2.
• Mon: The Charabombs.
• Monster Arena: Most towns in Bomberman Tournament had arenas for Mon fighting.
• Most Definitely Not A Villain: An interesting case in Bomberman 64. Though Sirius actually does a great job at posing as your ally, Hudson Soft kind of ruins his disguise with their descriptions of him in the game and the manual by constantly questioning his true intentions. The fact that the level where Sirius tests Bomberman's battle skills is titled "Friend or Foe?" doesn't exactly help his disguise either.
• Musical Nod: In Bomberman Hero, the menu theme is the first strain of Level 1 from Super Bomberman.
• Mutually Exclusive Powerups: The piercing bombs and the manually thrown bombs.
• Nice Job Breaking It Hero: To be fair, you probably didn't expect Sirius to betray you in Bomberman 64.
• Nostalgia Level: Super Bomberman 5 has perhaps the most ridiculous execution of this trope with the first four worlds being entire Nostalgia Worlds based on the four preceding games.
• Not So Different: Used as a marketing ploy for Bomberman: Act Zero.
• One Game For The Price Of Two: The Charabombs
• One Hit Point Wonder: In the early games, getting caught in explosions or colliding with enemies meant instant explodey death. Grabbing the Heart power-up granted you one hit of Mercy Invincibility (although you can pick it up again after it's blasted out of you in some games).
• The Only One Allowed To Defeat You: Regulus goes as far as killing his own teammates to ensure that he would be the one to defeat Bomberman.
• Person Of Mass Destruction: The original game Bomberman. Firewalking buff meant you could endlessly chain your bombs to wipe out the entire level and never lose a life again.
  • Also seen in the minigames in Bomberman Tournament, invincibility during the minigames meant the best strategy was to chain bombs and run around like a nutcase trying to kill as many enemies as possible.
• Pinocchio Syndrome: The original "plot" was Bomberman's quest to escape the bomb factory thereby becoming human.
• Poison Mushroom: The Skull item.
• Polygon Ceiling: Smacked into hard with Bomberman 64. Still, it hasn't stopped some people from playing it (or enjoying it in some cases).
• Poorly Disguised Pilot / Fully Absorbed Finale - kinda.. more of a Very Well Disguised And Absorbed Prequel. At the end of the original Bomberman he becomes human- particularly, the protagonist from Lode Runner.
• Quirky Miniboss Squad: The "Five Bad Bombers" from Super Bomberman 2, the "Crush Bombers" from Generation and whatever "_____ Bombers" squad appears in the other games.
  • The 'Four Demons of Garaden' in Bomberman Hero which were the catfish-esque robot; Endol, the annoying bigbird; Baruda, the sphinx-like Bolban, and the lusty catgirl Natia with her pet robo-spider Chronus.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Pommy, first introduced in Bomberman 64: The Second Attack!, and frequently seen thereafter as a Charabom/Karabon.
  • The cute rabbit-like critters Bomberman can ride on from the 4th Super game and on. The official U.S. name is "Louie"... Or at least that was the name of the one Bomberman got to ride in Bomberman Hero.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Again, Altair's robot guardian in Bomberman 64.
  • It even states in the instruction booklet that he is in fact, quite obsessed with overkill.
• The Right Hand Of Doom: one of the more ridiculous attempts at "badass" in the character design of Bomberman: Act Zero
• Rule Of Fun
• Sidetracked By The Gold Saucer: The Karabon battle minigame from Bomberman Tournament.
• So Bad Its Horrible: Bomberman: Act Zero for the Xbox 360 (which, by the way, is an ungame as far as Bomberman purists, and even Hudson themselves, are concerned).
• Spell My Name With An S: Bagular/Buggler/Bagura, the recurring Big Bad.
• Spinoff: The Bomberman Land series on the DS and PSP, which shifts the focus to bomb-based Mini Games.
• Stalked By The Bell
• Stellar Name: Bomberman 64 features characters named Orion, Regulus, Altair and Sirius.
• Strange Bedfellows: Bomberman and Regulus
  • Bomberman and Max in the Jetters game, due to Max's nature in the anime the game was based on.
• Stuff Blowing Up: This speaks for itself.
• Super Title 64 Advance: Bomberman probably has more examples than any other series (including Mario).
• Super Drowning Skills: This is lampshaded in Bomberman 64: The Second Attack, when Pommy taunts him about not crawling through a pipe filled with running water.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel
• That One Boss: Altair's overkill-obsessed robot guardian in Bomberman 64; Nitia in Bomberman Hero, Bomber Elite from Generations, as well as one in some of the other games.
  • The second half of the Mantis Spider boss fight, especially after you collect 100 gold cards. After blasting away about half its life, the creature breaks the floor in a fit of rage and you drop down to its web to continue the battle. The web itself limits your movement drastically due to narrow paths suspended over a bottomless pit, and when the boss itself obscures your view of the main character, it becomes very easy to walk off the web and fall to your doom. Fortunately a friend will save you the first few times you fall into the pit. However,as mentioned before, after you beat the game with 100 gold cards, your helper stops helping you all together for story reasons. This is especially infuriating since it's very easy to miss the web and fall to your death right after Mantis breaks the ground.
  • The War Beast from the Jetters game was intended to be a fairly challenging Puzzle Boss based on the assumption that you knew raising the Carabom, Yuno, would give you remote detonation bombs. If you didn't know this, good luck tricking it to swallow your bombs before they explode.
• Third Person Person: "Pommy's name is Pommy!"
• Underwater Boss Battle: Bomberman Hero featured some levels with Bomberman turning into a vehicle. One of these was the Bomber Submarine.
• Unexpected Shmup Level: Some of the underwater and air levels in Bomberman Hero.
• Unrealistic Black Hole: Black hole bombs in Bomberman 64: The Second Attack!.
• Vehicular Assault: The second Orion battle in Bomberman 64.
• Verbal Tic: Pommy's tendency to add "myu" to sentences.
  • Rukifellth's Evil Laugh might also be a verbal tic.
• The Yoshi: Ricky the Kangaroo, and then later the other Charabombs (especially Pommy). Also Louie in Bomberman Hero.
• You Exclamation: Sirius to Regulus, before the final final battle in Bomberman 64.

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