Wario Blast: Featuring Bomberman! (Game Boy) Playthrough

A playthrough of Nintendo's 1994 puzzle-action game for the Nintendo Game Boy, Wario Blast Featuring Bomberman!

In this video, I play through the normal mode as both characters. Wario's game begins at 0:24, and Bomberman's begins at 54:32. Finally, at 1:46:58, I show a quick demo of the battle game.

Everything was played through the game's Super Game Boy enhanced mode. The Super Game Boy provides the game a custom border, predefined color palettes, a couple of digitized sound effects, and multiplayer battle games using the SNES controllers. Like all Super Game Boy enhanced games, it runs perfectly fine on stock Game Boy hardware as well.

Wario Blast Featuring Bomberman! is the localized US version of the original Bomberman GB game released in Japan, and not to be confused with the 1990 title Bomber Boy, released as Atomic Punk (   • Atomic Punk (Game Boy) Playthrough - ...  ) in the US. The US release named Bomberman GB was actually the sequel to this game but was not named as such because this one's localized title.

The US version introduces Wario into the mix. He wasn't in the initial Japanese release, and I suspect that this has something to do with the fact that Hudson themselves published the title in Japan, while Nintendo handled publication for the west. It does seem a bit weird to have Wario shoehorned into a Bomberman game, but he's a cool inclusion, nonetheless.

So Wario Blast Featuring Bomberman! is pretty standard as far as Bomberman games go, but it does have a few neat things to it to make it stand out. The single-player mode is now presented in a manner more consistent with the traditional multiplayer modes of past games. Each stage consists of a best 2-of-3 set of matches that require you kill the enemies and find the exit before the timer runs out.

Clearing each world will give Bomberman or Wario access to a new power-up that wasn't previously available, similar to how Atomic Punk doled out its power-ups. There's also a motorcycle to ride around that gives a huge speed boost and allows you to jump over blocks, and it makes the final few areas much more frantic and fast-paced than the early game action.

I enjoyed Wario Blast. The music is catchy, and though the graphics (enhanced or not) are fairly nondescript and simple, they get the job done. At least, in the single-player games they do. In multiplayer, it can be very easy to get confused over who you're controlling since there are only two characters (Bomberman and Wario), and their color is the only way to tell apart multiples. Not ideal for a Game Boy game, as I'm sure you can imagine.

The rest of the game is super solid, though. It plays just like any other older Bomberman, and the use of Wario, though superfluous, does add a bit more personality and fun to the game.
_____________
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!