Topic: The ULTIMATE Bomberman game--Never to be played ever again

[Hudson Soft Fan]

All about the holy grail of Bomberman from two decades ago.

There were actually two versions of the game: Hi-Ten Bomberman made in 1993 and Hi-Ten Chara Bomb made in 1994.






Hi-Ten refers to High Definition and ten players.

These were never commercial products, never released to the consumer market for purchase, never emulated, and almost certainly never to be played or seen again. Hudson was bought by Konami and there's no trace of Hudson left there either. Supposedly the last remaining Hi-Ten unit ended up in a dumpster.







Hi-Ten Bomberman was a special demonstration tournament Bomberman game developed by Hudson Soft in 1993 for Japan's defunct analog High Definition standard (MUSE or Hi-Vision) which was in early RnD by the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation NHK for several decades before the 1990s. Japanese consumer versions were demo'ed in the United States in the early 1980s.

From Wikipedia:

In 1981, the MUSE system was demonstrated for the first time in the United States, using the same 5:3 aspect ratio as the Japanese system.Upon visiting a demonstration of MUSE in Washington, US President Ronald Reaganwas most impressed and officially declared it "a matter of national interest" to introduce HDTV to the US. Several systems were proposed as the new standard for the US, including the Japanese MUSE system, but all were rejected by the FCC because of their higher bandwidth requirements. At this time, the number of television channels was growing rapidly and bandwidth was already a problem. A new standard had to be more efficient, needing less bandwidth for HDTV than the existing NTSC.

In '93 and '94 the two versions of Hi-Ten were played on very expensive plasma HDTVs.

Yeah, consumer analog HD broadcasts and plasma HDTV sets did indeed exist in Japan in the early 90s, but at tremendous cost. This was not the modern digital MPEG-2 based HDTV standard we have today with 720p, 1080i and 1080p, but something like 1035i.

Anyway Hudson took the five Hi-Ten units it produced (at a cost of about $2 million each in todays inflation-adjusted U.S. dollars at today's exchange rates) on tour to their Summer Caravan gaming events in Japan.


Hi-Ten Bomberman, and its enhanced version with playable Bonk, Hi-Ten Chara Bomb, each used different specialized hardware to drive the games and convert them to the analog HD standard. The first version used a high-end PC/workstation from either NEC or IBM with circuit boards custom designed by Hudson for the graphics.A pair of standard PC-Engine CoreGrafx (or CoreGrafx II) consoles with multitaps (supporting 5 controllers each) were used for player input only. The PC-Engine CoreGrafx I/II were simply cheaper & cheaper revisions of the PC-Engine which was Japan's version of our TurboGrafx-16.


^Notice the monster high-end workstation computer, two CoreGrafx II consoles, and what is probably all kinds of other HD adapter / converter equipment to output the game to the analog HDTV display.The second version (Chara Bomb) used Hudson's 32-Bit prototype development board, based on the special circuit boards in the first version. This was called Project Tetsujin, also known as the Iron Man board.

Hudson's 32-Bit Tetsujin / Iron Man board from 1992 (forerunner of NEC's PC-FX console of late 1994)





The Iron Man / Tetsujin board was later modified & reworked, in less ambitious, scaled-back form, into the NEC PC-FX 32-Bit console that released in Japan in late 1994 around the time of the Japanese PlayStation and Sega Saturn launches.



From Giant Bomb:

The case of the PC-FX is shaped like a computer and was designed to be an upgradeable console.  The hardware, designed in 1992, was codenamed "Iron Man" and was supposed to be implemented in a new console to replace the PC-Engine after it was developed.  PC-Engine developers were upset that NEC was releasing a new console when the market was still expanding so NEC held out another two years while continuing to support the PC-Engine.  In 1994, NEC receieved pressure from 3DO, Sega, and Sony with new consoles on the horizon for that year.  With few options, the severely outdated Iron Man hardware was used to make the PC-FX, with the intentions of releasing a 3D expansion to compensate for the unit's underpowered graphics.

However the NEC PC-FX did not, and could not play the Hi-Ten Bomberman games because PC-FX could not run games in HD resolutons. Also, NEC marketed the console for a special genre of games (FMV /anime). Bomberman was not a fit.

Several years later (1996) Hudson made Saturn Bomberman. It had a multiplayer mode with upto 10 players. When there were 8 or more players playing, it displayed in a widescreen aspect ratio but obviously not in any actual HD pixel/line resolution of any kind.

The multiplayer mode sprites on Saturn were not nearly as fancy as they were in Hi-Ten either, or even as detailed as they were in the main campaign on Saturn. However Hi-Ten was Hudson's inspiration for 10-player Saturn Bomberman.

This is footage from 1997 when Hi-Ten was still playable at NHK in Japan.

(Hi-Ten Bomberman)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5bZz5Xofi8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ryRP26QNtk


(Hi-Ten Chara Bomb)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGVJTJSz9Xg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MvS0OH3_tw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtH8wZSKSkA


So you can compare the graphics of Hi-Ten to what 10-player matches looked like in Saturn Bomberman:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5zUzBJaN6E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cXy2CAPemw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_u0Ig8hXOg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj8mMxuGvxA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9iehuO1fVU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uP5cbDW5PfE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73BzsP0Kwrk

sources I used for this post:


http://randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com/bomb/arc-hiten/
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132195/the_game_master_speaks_hudsons_.php?page=3
http://www.giantbomb.com/pc-fx/3045-75/
http://www.pcenginefx.com/PC-FX/html/pc-fx_world_-_f_r_-_hi-ten_bom.html
http://bonkzonk.com/game.ktn?Game=htbm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-definition_television

-EDGE magazine issue 17
-Next Generation magazine issue 3
-Video Games & Computer Entertainment magazine, October 1992
-article scan from unknown 1992 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly or special coverage insert

[Hudson Soft Fan]

Sorry about that, had to edit out all the HTML code.


Everything *should* look & work okay now.

[ShyGuy]

Dang, that is sad. I miss Hudson

[NWR_insanolord]

I read all the way to the end thinking of Saturn Bomberman and then you mentioned it.

[azeke]

I remember your posts on neogaf.

Also weren't there some kind of browser Bomberman game?

[Hudson Soft Fan]

I read all the way to the end thinking of Saturn Bomberman and then you mentioned it.

Of course.


Saturn Bomberman is no doubt the very best one that got released.  The main game and the multiplayer modes are both completely awesome. 

[Hudson Soft Fan]

Below is a screen capture from the 1st of those three Hi-Ten Chara Bomb youtube videos of footage taken in 1997 at NHK.
 
Keep in mind Chara Bomb was the enhanced revision with Bonk made in '94 apparently using the Iron Man / Tetsujin hardware.




Somewhere in that mess of expensive equipment should be that Iron Man board,  perhaps hidden within one of those big workstations. 


It has always been far from crystal clear exactly what base hardware from NEC or IBM, in combination with exactly what custom hardware from Hudson drove the first version of Hi-Ten in '93.  How did the Iron Man board come about (from the special circuit boards in the workstation that powered the first version?) and exactly what specs changed when Iron Man was re-developed into the PC-FX tower console released in Japan at the end of 1994.     Very confusing to say the least.




There were rumors of an NEC 32-Bit console (it would be developed by Hudson like all the others) as far back as the middle of 1990, months before the first rumors of Sega's 32-Bit console started.









EDIT: The following is from the Gamasutra interview with Hudson's Takahashi-Meijin in 2008.




 It answers some of questions I have, but really only ends up opening up even more questions for me.

With the HD Bomberman [Hi-Ten Bomberman] that was playable in one of these Caravan events, it was really kind of groundbreaking, because there wasn't any real HD technology at that time, and also it was 10-player. Can you go a little bit into the origin of that?




TM: Back then in Japan, there was a national TV company called NHK. They were trying to push HDTV, so with that overall flow, Hudson was thinking, "Okay, if TV gets that good, the program itself needs to be that good as well."




Also, the screen ratio was going to be 16:9, so that's why 10-player was possible, because you have more characters lined up versus 4:3. They didn't have the graphic board to support that back then, so they had to manually put one together one.


And that became the Iron Man board, correct?


TM: Tetsujin, yeah. It was only used internally. How could you know all this? (laughter)


Just to clarify because some people have been confused, even though Hi-Ten Bomberman was created on the Tetsujin board, it was never intended for PC-FX, correct? Even though the PC-FX was based on the Tetsujin board.


TM: The PC-FX was based on the Tetsujin board but it wasn't quite the same. The graphics weren't in HD because we didn't use the HD graphics board. The FX was not in our vision when we first developed that game. We developed it simply for use in HD.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132195/the_game_master_speaks_hudsons_.php?page=3

I remember your posts on neogaf.

Sweet.

Also weren't there some kind of browser Bomberman game?

Yeah, this one http://bombermine.clay.io

[Hudson Soft Fan]

Oh wow, found an article from EDGE that sheds at least some light on the Iron Man / Tetsujin development board and the PC-FX console.

[Hudson Soft Fan]

Now this could be really telling if someone could do some homework. An NEC PC-FX console disassembled, revealing all the guts, including the processor(s) / chips on the motherboard.










































credit to Lawrence on NFGgames.com for doing this work, a very long time ago.

It would be nice to finally know & understand how the chips in the final consumer PC-FX console released in late 1994 relate to those on the Iron Man / Tetsujin development board shown in back 1992.

[Hudson Soft Fan]

I dare not edit any of my posts for fear of messing them all up again.


Just wanted to list one more source for my info:


http://faberp.tripod.com/IronMan.htm

[Hudson Soft Fan]

Finally, a couple more sources of information on Iron Man / Tetsujin and how it was transformed into the PC-FX hardware, translated by Google.




http://tinyurl.com/mzhu8ab

http://tinyurl.com/l9mgx4c

[Stratos]

Who owns Bomberman now? That franchise still has enough popularity to bring in some money.


I thought the WiiWare version was a blast, especially with it including 8-player multiplayer using both Wiimotes and Gamecube controllers. It was wonderful playing with a packed room using Wavebirds.

[MegaByte]

Who owns Bomberman now? That franchise still has enough popularity to bring in some money.

Konami.

[Spak-Spang]

Bomberman is one of my favorite Multiplayer experiences. 
I think it is a simple perfectly designed experience. 

I hope Konami doesn't leave the franchise dormant.  In fact, this is something I would love Nintendo to do.  Find classic IPs that other companies have abandoned and buying the rights to them.  Bomberman is a great experience.  It would be a great character in Smash Bros.  It would be a great character/game design to use for Wii U Party games/Mario Party games. 

It could still work in its own game. 

Actually, I would love Nintendo to buy the rights to all the classic arcade games, single screen games, and have a classic collection with HD Hand Drawn Graphics.  Like Mr. Do, Donkey Kong, Bomberman, Frogger, Burger Time, Root Beer Tapper.

[Stratos]

Sadly I do not see that happening from Nintendo's efforts. The thought has crossed my mind to start a company whose purpose is to gather up old, abandoned IPs and develop new titles and re-releases when able to do so. Talk to me in a decade and I may have the capital (and technical skills) to pull it off.

[azeke]

I played DSiWare Bomberman. It was cool but way too chaotic.

[Spak-Spang]

Stratos:  Its a good idea.  Timing is key though.  Pinball games are dead but making come back and Pinball Arcade although not the best digital Pinball game out there is great because you can play REAL pinball games againā€¦sorta.

I really miss the basic gameplay concepts of the old single screen games.  The games that have one single mechanic, and try to design a perfect experience around it.  You can play those games forever, because of the design of the gameā€¦and to see someone take modern technology and design into effect will creating a simple game could be fun.

For example:  Dynamic AI for ghosts in PacMan could make the game less about pattern manipulation and more about reflexes and planning your actions.

Donkey Kong trying to time barrel rolling to trip Mario up, and Mario having to more nimble and careful with his approach. 

Frogger with dynamic traffic, including vehicles that will slow down for others, try to stop to avoid you.  Others in a hurry that will speed or change lanes.

These are all ideas that can take the simple single screen arcade game experience and make it fresh and unique again.