Wario Blast review

You know how some games are just rebranded clones of other games? Like how Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine on the Genesis and Kirby's Avalanche on SNES are both re-skins of Super Puyo Puyo? Well this is one of those games.

Wario Blast: Featuring Bomberman! is essentially a reskinned Bomberman game, originally called Bomberman GB in Japan.

Hudson Soft and Nintendo didn’t just swap out the player sprite however, as you can actually choose to play as either Wario or Bomberman. This makes the game something of a crossover title, with these two unrelated characters interacting for the first time.

The crossover angle was already enough of an oddity to grab my interest, but looking into it bit further, it seems that early Bomberman games had a real identity crisis in the west. Much like we saw with Technos’ Kunio-kun games back in the day, Hudson didn’t seem to much care about what Bomberman was called in other markets.

One has to wonder if the original title maybe had too much political baggage to promote outside of Japan. Like maybe calling your hero “bomber” was just a bit too risqué for American audiences? Sounds plausible to me anyway. Whatever the reason, the first Bombermen released in the west went by the names “Atomic Punk” in North America and “Dynablaster” in Europe. These names were used for multiple titles in the early 90’s.

Japan: Bomber Boy

NA: Atomic Punk

Europe: Dynablaster

Ironically, the Bomberman GB that would become Wario Blast wasn’t even the first Bomberman game on the Game Boy! That one was called “Bomber Boy” in Japan, but had its name changed to the west-friendly variants in NA and Europe.

Actually, depending on how you count things, Bomberman GB was either the second or third Bomberman on Game Boy. See, there’s strange case “Bomber King: Scenario 2”, which got absorbed into the Master Blaster series for some reason. While arguably starting off as a Bomberman spin-off, the first Bomber King game was called “RoboWarrior” in the US. The Game Boy sequel that followed became, inexplicably, “Blaster Master Boy” in the US and “Blaster Master Jr.” in Europe. I honestly don’t know why.

And hey, if you enjoy all this sloppy rebranding madness then I recommend this rundown of the history of Bomberman games. There’s just a lot to cover there….

OK, so back Wario Blast…like, what is it? Well, this a pretty straightforward Bomberman, basically the classic versus mode you’re used to. At the beginning, you select your character—either Wario or Bomberman—and the battle begins!

This the same topdown, grid-based, all-explosions-all-the-time combat you’ve played elsewhere, though perhaps a bit more limited. Your explosions still produce perpendicular crosses of tidy, right-angled fire. The breakable titles still intermittently drop power-ups (increased fire range, more bombs for you to drop at one time) and the occasional skull icon to mess you up. You’re still facing off with other bombers in a fiery fight to the death—best out of three, of course.

However, instead of competing with identical competitors who only vary in their primary color, this game pits you against duplicates of the character you didn’t choose. So if you pick Wario, you’ll face multiple Bombermen. And if you pick Bomberman, you’ll face multiple Warios. Your opponents’ sprites seem to be one shade darker that the player sprite, with additional enemies another shade darker still.

Considering that the original Game Boy had only four shades of gray to work with, I wonder if the reason for Wario’s inclusion in this game (and starring role) was actually a clever way to introduce new sprites for some visual variation. Like, does the original game just have identical Bombermen walking around the battlefield? This way you at least get distinct player and enemy sprites.

And I imagine Wario was picked for this game instead of Mario, because of the bombing aspect. I’d venture to guess that Nintendo probably didn’t want their ironic mascot to blowing people up.

But hey, when you’ve got a job for Mario, but it’s not squeaky clean, G-Rated fun, you bring in his evil doppelgänger. Wario’s been filling the role essentially from his first appearance, but definitely since 1994.

Gameplay-wise, this is mostly just the classic battle mode you know and love. The player moves around a grid-based environment with a top-down view, trying to blow up the opposition before they can do the same to you. Each round is played best two out of three matches. And an additional enemy is added each round.

However, after winning three rounds against normal opponents (1-1, 1-2, 1-3), there’s a boss fight (1-4). Bosses generally float around the stage with no regard for obstacles and require multiple bomb blasts to defeat. Beating the boss gets you a permanent upgrade (bomb kicks, dashing, line bomb drops, etc.) and you move onto the next round.

Each area of the game offers a new visual theme and a unique boss at the end. The game even features a password system for saving your progress, so you can jump right back in wherever you left off (i.e.; the stage where you were blown to kingdom come).

Despite its limited character sprites, this game has some great audio and visual presentation. The on-screen action is easy to follow, and menu/splash screens feature big and impressive-clear pixel art of our cartoonish heroes. The music is also classic DMG faire, cheery chiptunes all the way. If you enjoy the Game Boy soundchip, you will dig this music for sure.

All in all, playing Wario Blast is definitely a…fun time. It’s simple, short, and the perfect kind of pick-up/put-down experience for gaming on the go. That classic Bomberman gameplay is just so evergreen, it proves to be enjoyable even when working within hardware limitations of the original Game Boy. So if you see this cart out in the wild, I recommend picking it up. Wario also approves, of course.