Hi-Ten Bomberman (Japanese: HI-TEN ボンバーマン, Haitenbonbāman) is a video game in the Bomberman series released in Summer 1993.
It was showcased and played exclusively at the Hudson Soft Super Caravan 1993 events in Japan, and later as an interactive exhibit at NHK Studio Park.
Overview[]
Hi-Ten Bomberman is a multiplayer-only game developed to support up to 10 players at a time, and utilizes a large, landscape-style HDTV screen to display its vast battlefield.
Gameplay Modes[]
There are five different gameplay modes featured in the game;
- Battle Royal: Battle Royal is a multiplayer battle between ten players, with the same tried-and-true gameplay formula as seen in previous games. The last Bomberman standing is the winner.
- 2 Group Battle: 2 Group Battle is a multiplayer mode where two teams of five players battle against each other.
- 3 Group Battle: 3 Group Battle is a nine-player-only battle mode in which three teams of three players each are pitted against one other.
- 5 Group Battle: In this mode, five two-player teams battle against each other.
- 1 VS 9 Battle: 1 VS 9 Battle is ten-player mode where one player must go up against a large team of nine other players.
Battlefield[]
The widescreen battlefield of Hi-Ten Bomberman featured Curve Marks that change the trajectory of kicked bombs, along with crate-themed Soft Blocks.
Items[]
As well as the typical power-ups (Bomb Up, Power Glove, etc.), there was also a new exclusive item, the Detonation Switch, which only appeared once per match and allows players to detonate their bombs anytime before the 3-second limit.
Characters[]
Depending on which controller port that the player uses, the Bomberman that he/she controls will be one of ten different colors:
- White Bomberman
- Pink Bomberman
- Brown Bomberman
- Cyan Bomberman
- Purple Bomberman
- Yellow Bomberman
- Green Bomberman
- Blue Bomberman
- Red Bomberman
- Black Bomberman
Hardware[]
Hi-Ten Bomberman was run on custom hardware, which consists of a joint effort between two PC Engine game consoles with two 5-player Multi Taps for the basic hardware and controller input, respectively, and a computer system with special custom-made circuit boards for the high-definition video display and 16:9 resolution (three times as that of the PC Engine's native 4:3 resolution). The game itself was run from a hard drive, and the music is played off of a TDK CD-W12 audio CD.
Between five and ten of these units were produced for the 1993 Super Caravan events. According to Caravan legend Master Takahashi, each unit had cost 2,000,000 Japanese Yen (about $20,000 USD by 1993's currency exchange rates) to manufacture, due to the cost of memory and components at the time. This hardware configuration wasn't meant for home gaming in mind; Specifically, it was meant to demonstrate video gaming on the Japanese analog HDTV standards.
This hardware would eventually become the basis of the 32-bit HuC62 (A.K.A. Project Tetsujin) development system, on which the PC-FX video game console was based.
History[]
Hudson Soft Super Caravan 1993[]
Hi-Ten Bomberman was played exclusively at the Hudson Soft Super Caravan events in Summer of 1993. A tournament for the game was held at each of the forty-four venues (from July 19th, 1993 to August 31st, 1993), using the game's multiplayer modes. The winners at each venue were awarded a trophy, certificate, and a PC Engine DUO-R game console, the finalists a Bomberman staff t-shirt, semi-finalists the Hudson Super Shooting Watch, and all participants each received a copy of Deden no Den, a promotional version of Bomberman '94 based on the Far East of Eden RPG series.
At one point, Hudson Soft had plans to showcase the game across other regions, but for reasons unknown, this never came to fruition.
NHK Studio Park[]
For a time, the original game was set up as an interactive exhibit, housed at the NHK Studio Park in Tokyo, Japan. According to the Bomberman fan site, Tadaima Bomberman Land, the game could be rented for play for 500,000 Yen for two days.
NEC PC-FX port rumor[]
At one point, there were rumors that Hi-Ten Bomberman was going to be released on the PC-FX console and that it was cancelled due to NEC's software publishing guidelines that emphasized on the system's FMV capabilities. These claims of such a port are unsubstantiated.
According to a Gamasutra.com interview with Master Takahashi, Hi-Ten Bomberman was never meant for the PC-FX console, and was only developed for use in HD. Another reason why Hi-Ten Bomberman was not released on the PC-FX, is because the console wasn't capable of running games in HD resolutions, even though it is based on the prototype Tetsujin board, which in turn was a development of Hi-Ten Bomberman's special custom hardware.
Recent Years[]
In 2019, Master Takahashi found a number of CDs containing the game's data. He had also donated the audio CD containing the game's music tracks to the Game Preservation Society.
On December 3rd, 2021, Japanese Twitter user @MADOKA_Park uploaded old recorded footage from VHS of the game during debugging, which took place at the Hudson Central Research Institute on the second floor.[1]
Gallery[]
Videos[]
Trivia[]
- The ten-player mechanic, along with the large, widescreen battlefield was carried over to Saturn Bomberman.
- "Hi-Ten" comes from "Hi-Vision" (the first HDTV system in Japan) and "ten-player".
- Hi-Ten Bomberman earned the Committee Chairman's Award at the 1993 High Vision Awards hosted by the Japanese Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications.
- Being a title that demonstrates video games on HDTVs, Hi-Ten Bomberman could be seen as the first high-definition video game. However, it was technically the first commercial video game to be created for widescreen HDTVs, as Namco's Homerun Contest from five years earlier was developed as the very first high-definition video game.
- In 1994, an updated version of the game featuring characters from other Hudson Soft properties, Hi-Ten Chara-Bomb, was showcased and played at the 1994 Super Caravan events one year after the original.
- During the early 1990s, HDTV sets like those used in the Super Caravan events had price tags running up to the millions in Japanese Yen.
- NHK, the Japanese national public broadcasting organization that helped to organize the Super Caravan events, were advocates of HDTV technologies for years.
- In fact, Hi-Ten Bomberman was developed in response to NHK's attempts to push the HDTV market in Japan.
- According to Master Takahashi, the chief programmer was Katsuhiro Nozawa[2], who conceived the game and was involved in the development of several Hudson Soft titles, such as Star Soldier and J.J. & Jeff.
Sources[]
- Random Hoo-Haas article
- Facebook page "The Advent of HD Gaming...in 1993?!" from the official website of Bomberman Live: Battlefest
- PCEngineFX page on Hi-Ten Bomberman
- Wikipedia article
- Siliconera: Long-lost Early HD Game Hi-Ten Bomberman Preserved Thanks To Hudson’s Takahashi Meijin