Bomberman

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Bomberman, Bomberman Mass destruction across the land. Makes a bomb, any size. And he's yours, to customize. Look out! Here comes the Bomberman! —Bomberman 64 commercial, sung to the tune of the Spider-Man theme

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, eight, or even TEN (Saturn Bomberman) 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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Tropes used in Bomberman include:

• 100% Completion: The N64 games, most notably.
• Ambiguously Gay: Nitros from Bomberman Hero.
• The Anime of the Game: Bomberman Jetters. Also Bomberman B Daman Bakugaiden, which predates Jetters.
• Arc Number: 5656. Entering it as a password in the various 16-bit Bomberman games almost always had an effect, though what it did varied depending on the game.
• Ax Crazy: Assault Bomber. From the moment he crashes into the arena in a freaking meteor and you hear his insane cackle, to him flying all over the arena shooting enough bombs to level a small town without much care for anything resembling accuracy, it's pretty clear that the guy is absolutely unhinged.

So.. are you BOMBERMAAAN!?!?

• Badass Adorable: Very good example, especially since his face looks like (n n) whenever he's happy.
  • The opening cutscene in Online shows Bomberman practicing karate in a forest; it makes people go "awww" when they see it.
• BFB: As if Bomberman's bombs weren't big enough, he can pump them up to jumbo size in Bomberman 64 and The Second Attack! while holding them! This is actually required to kill some enemies-not from the bigger explosion, but by crushing them with the Pumped-Up Bomb.
  • Saturn Bomberman's intro sequence is notable for including some truly GIGANTIC bombs being thrown at Bomberman that are several times his size. This doesn't stop him from grabbing and flinging one back to his assailants, but overshooting and having it fall into a volcano. Cue Mass "Oh Crap" over the next few seconds as the camera zooms out, the planet starts bulging, and then turns into a planet-sized Cartoon Bomb before exploding.
  • Bomberman can do this in Generation as well.
• 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.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: Thunder Bomber from Bomberman Online and Bomberman Jetters has a rather impressive pair of eyebrows.
• Bonus Level of Heaven: Bomberman 64.
• Bonus Stage: Bomberman Hero has one after each of the first 4 bosses, in the form of simple timed areas with gems, power-ups and 1-ups to grab.
• Boss-Only Level: Pretty much every boss in 64.
• Boss Game: Bomberman Quest.
• Brain In a Jar: Bagular at the end of Super Bomberman 3. He continues like this in Super Bomberman 4. He gets his body back in Bomberman Hero.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Max in Bomberman Tournament.
  • Nitros in Bomberman HERO.
• Captain Ersatz: Almost every major character in Bomberman HERO is a Captain Ersatz to a Star Wars character.
  • Pommy is an expy to both Kirby and Pikachu.
• Cartoon Bomb
• Catgirl: Natia from HERO is a sexily sadistic example. With weird hair, too... and a GIGANTIC head.
• Chain-Reaction Destruction: Bosses in Super Bomberman. Somehow it explodes in thin air around them too.
• Character Name and the Noun Phrase: Eric and the Floaters, the ZX Spectrum version of Bomberman. Thank goodness this name didn't catch on; amongst other things, it would have meant that the hero's name is "Eric", which is far less cool than "Bomberman". And the "floaters" are presumably the balloon enemies, but just try and NOT think of the potential toilet humor.
• Chasing Your Tail: The Sphinx-like Bolban 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.
• Cheerful Child: Bomberman, he was even called Cheerful White.
• Chekhov's Gun: When Regulus/Beelzebub saves Bomberman by cancelling out Zoniha's light attack with his dark bombs. During the true final battle, The Angel of Light and Shadow uses a similar attack as she did, and using the dark bombs cancels it out.
• Collision Damage: 2D games kill you on contact with enemies. The 3D games tend to just stun you for a few seconds instead if you walk into them instead of killing you outright, but the stun could easily be long enough for the enemy to deal a killing blow.
• 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 (it's doubtful that he'd let us).
• 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. Some versions only reduce bomb count and explosion size, but the other major powerups are lost.
  • Bomberman 64: The Second Attack! gives you three continues that preserve your powerups, averting this trope nicely.
• Continuity Reboot: Bomberman: Act Zero was meant to take the franchise in a Darker and Edgier direction. It wasn't well-received.
  • And long before that, Bomberman for TurboGrafx-16, which gave us the Bomberman we now know and love.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Red Mountain in Bomberman 64 and Nature Planet Neverland in Bomberman 64: The Second Attack!. Bomberman Hero plays with it a bit for the first couple of levels near lava, where you must enter cooling capsules to refill your health as you gradually take damage from the heat.
• Cowardly Sidekick: Pommy.
• Crossover: Wario Blast for the Game Boy (which is actually a dolled-up localization of Bomberman GB).
• Cursed with Awesome: The Skull item will sometimes give you almost uncontrollable speed and fast fused bombs, as "diseases".
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Double-tapping the bomb button in Bomberman 64 or The Second Attack! does a stationary Bomb Kick. The very same action in Bomberman Generation's Battle Mode or Saturn Bomberman will Line Bomb instead (unless you change the configuration for the latter to one specific setting that puts Line Bomb on Z instead of C).
• The Dark Chick: Artemis in Bomberman 64, Natia (from Devils of Garaden) from Bomberman Hero, Beauty Bomber from Crush Bombers in Bomberman Generation, Mermaid Bomber in Bomberman Jetters.
• Darker and Edgier: Bomberman: Act Zero, a prime example of how this trope can be misused.
  • Bomberman 64: The Second Attack! is also this to a lesser extent.
• Dead Character Walking: In most of the newer Bomberman games, there's usually an option to allow defeated players to harrass the living ones by riding around the edge of the stage in a hovering vehicle and throwing bombs at them. In some of the games, managing to directly kill one of the players this way could also revive you and let you resume playing normally, hopefully not getting killed in turn by the same player who you just offed.
• Deadpan Snarker: In Bomberman 64: The Second Attack, Bomberman is revealed to be this in the Good Ending.
• Destroyable Items: Practically all games in the series. In some games, only good items can be destroyed by accident-the Skull just gets blasted across the arena!
  • In some games, destroying a powerup results in a swarm of enemies!
• Did Not Get the Girl: Bomberman does not get anywhere with Lilith in The Second Attack!.
• Disc One Final Boss: Altair.
• Dolled-Up Installment: Bomberman Hero was originally going to be a new Bonk game, but at some point or another the staff decided it'd have more mass appeal as a Bomberman game. Sure explains why it's a mainstream 3D platformer where Bomberman can actually jump on his own.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": Regulus in The Second Attack.
• Don't Try This At Home: Pile Driver from Generation.
• Double Knockout: Mass-mutual KOs are common in multiplayer, due to the hectic pace of battle.
• Downer Ending: The Bad Ending for The Second Attack more or less implies that the universe and all life will be destroyed by the God of Chaos. To say nothing of how the Astral Knights stay dead, Rukifellth is engulfed by Sthertoth, and Lilith stays behind on the Warship Noah to be with Rukifellth just as it's being destroyed, leaving Bomberman, Pommy and Sthertoth as the only surviving characters.
• Dragon Ascendant: For some reason, Brain Bomber becomes the Big Bad in Bomberman Tournament.
  • Demoted to Dragon: Plasma Bomber.
• Dummied Out: Atomic Bomberman came with modding tools, making Dummied Out portions of the game easy to find - including unused, profanity-laced vocal taunts.
• Elemental Powers: Done liberally in The Second Attack and Generation.
  • Playing with Fire: Baelfael, Bomberman's bombs' basic element.
  • An Ice Person: Bhemos, the ice bombs in Generation.
  • Making a Splash: The water bombs in Generation.
  • Blow You Away: Ashtarth, the wind bombs in Generation.
  • Shock and Awe: Zhael. The thunder bombs in Generation and Max's plasma bombs.
  • Magma Man/Dishing Out Dirt: Molok.
  • Light'Em Up/Holy Hand Grenade: Zoniha, Mihael!Lilith, The Angel of Light and Shadow. The light bombs in Generation.
  • Casting a Shadow: Regulus/Beelzebub uses both solidified shadows and the gravity type.
  • Power of the Void/Blood Magic: Rukifellth.
• Enemy Mine: Bomberman and Regulus.
  • Bomberman and Max in the Jetters game, due to Max's nature in the anime the game was based on.
• Everything's Better with Dinosaurs: Saturn Bomberman. They're adorable and give you a ride, along with a charging or jumping ability. Also Bomberman Fantasy Race, where they're an optional alternative to the roois. Different dinosaurs also show up early on in Super Bomberman 4 as generic enemies... until you blow them up and they turn back into eggs. The first one you walk over hatches back into the same dinosaur and gives you a ride, while any extra ones follow you around like Yoshi eggs.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: Let's see, Mooks, fish, kid mice holding balloons, pandas, walking bombs, dragons, dinosaurs (unless they hatch from giant eggs when you walk over them), 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 villains...
• Evil All Along: Sirius. Hoo boy.
• Evil Laugh: Bagular in HERO, Rukifellth and Zoniha in The Second Attack!, Sirius in Bomberman 64.
  • Thunder Bomber has a decent one when using his special attack in Bomberman Online. He also has a hilariously narmy one in Bomberman Jetters.
• Evil Twin: Black Bomber.
  • For a while, at least. He's become one of the White Bomber's good friends.
• Expy: Bomberman himself is based on the enemies from NES version of Lode Runner, appearance-wise. The game acknowledges it at the end of the first NES game; and in the latest remakes by Hudson, the enemies resemble Bomberman even more.
  • The World Bombers from Super Bomberman 3 could also be this to the World Bombers from Super Bomberman Panic Bomber W:
    • Rasta Bomber: Mexican Bomber.
    • Metal Bomber: Metal Bomber (?).
    • Bomb Gunman: Bomber the Kid.
    • Animal Bomber: Bomber Uhho.
• Five-Bad Band: The Five Dastardly Bombers:
  • The Big Bad: Plasma Bomber.
  • The Dragon: Magnet Bomber.
  • The Evil Genius: Brain Bomber.
  • The Brute: Golem Bomber.
  • The Dark Chick: Pretty Bomber.
• Five-Man Band: In the Land games:
  • The Hero: Cheerful White.
  • The Lancer: Cool Black.
  • The Big Guy: Giant Gold.
  • The Smart Guy: Bookworm Green.
  • The Chick: Cute Pink.
  • Tagalong Kid: Kid Blue.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: Natia's apperance from Bomberman Hero. Also she carries a whip.
• Giant Spider: Mantis in Bomberman 64.
• God: In The Second Attack!, you have to fight The Angel of Light and Shadow, who created the universe, as the True Final Boss.
• Graphics Induced Super Deformed: In the first game, as seen in the box art. Then it was adapted as a default version and the original one didn't see the light again until Act Zero.
• Gravity Master:
  • Bomberman 64: The Second Attack! has the title character sucked into a black hole, which is really created by a gravity generator that needs to be destroyed.
  • Regulus' bombs create black holes.
• Heel Face Turn: Black Bomber. Originally the antagonist in Bomberman 2 up through about Bomberman '94/Mega Bomberman. After that, he's portrayed as a sidekick, companion, and perhaps rival to White Bomber when Max isn't taking that role instead, to the point where he's the second player character in co-op.
  • 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.
• High Heel Face Revolving Door: Pretty Bomber. She is either one of the bad guys in the main games, or one of the good guys in the spin-offs.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The player can VERY EASILY do this if (s)he's not paying attention, especially in multiplayer. You're probably lying if you say you haven't blown yourself up at least once.
• Humongous Mecha: Several robotic bosses fall into this trope.
  • Special attention goes to Constructor X, who qualifies for Super Robot-hood with:
    • A Drill Rocket Punch.
    • Drill hand opening up to reveal a Laser Blade which, when swung, spontaneously causes explosions for no apparent reason (other than it's cool).
    • Calling Out Attacks. Some of them are almost incomprehensible, but the fact still stands.
    • It's formed by two talking construction vehicles who're brothers or have pilots that are brothers. The combination sequence reeks of Super Robot.
• Intercontinuity Crossover: Wario Blast for the Game Boy, which is a typical Bomberman game with Wario starring alongside the bomber.
  • Bomberman is also a playable character in the Konami/Takara Mascot Fighter Dream Mix TV: World Fighters. Yes, that means he can fight Solid Snake, Simon Belmont, AND Optimus Prime, among others. It actually makes sense if you consider that Hudson Soft is a subsidiary of Konami, and had partnered up with Takara to create the B-Daman line of toys.
• 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..."

• Kangaroos Represent Australia: Started showing up with Bomberman '94/Mega Bomberman and have practically become a mainstay since then. They're even more adorable and also give you a ride, and for whatever reason, hatch from giant eggs.
• Kill'Em All: The bad ending of The Second Attack!.
• Large Ham: Mujoe (especially him), Machbom, Thunder Bomber, Gold Bomber and Constructor X.
• The Left Hand Of Doom: Bomberman had an oversized claw glove on his left hand in Bomberman: Act Zero.
• Lethal Lava Land: Red Mountain.
• Let's Play: One for Bomberman Tournament is available by Hawk3y389.
  • Bomberman Hero and Bomberman Jetters Lets Plays are available by TheStrawhatNO!, hosted on the Let's Play Archive.
• 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, which would force him to use his body to kill off everyone else before the fire killed him.
• Market-Based Title: Bomberman Tournament is known as Bomberman Story in Japan. It's a more fitting title if you ask this troper, since "Tournament" would imply more emphasis on online multiplayer with singleplayer that boils down to "multiplayer with bots". However, this game is more "Bomberman meets The Legend of Zelda with a side of Pokémon" in terms of the singleplayer... not that some people even bother with singleplayer in a Bomberman game.
  • Bomberman 64 can refer to TWO different games. The one we know is known as Baku Bomberman in Japan. The Japanese Bomberman 64 is actually a 2D game that never got exported.
  • Dyna Blaster and Atomic Punk.
  • Eric and the Floaters for the ZX Spectrum.
• Mercy Invincibility: A very generous amount is given to you at the beginning of every level in the first Super Bomberman game, so much that a trick could be used to take advantage of it. Lay a bomb, and wait for it to explode, then keep tapping the A button to lay more bombs which will immediately explode because they are within an explosion. Walk around the level while doing this and you can get a very nice head start.
  • You are also invincible for a short amount of time after getting hit if you have a heart powerup in many games.
• Minigame Game: The Bomberman Land spinoff series.
• Mirror Boss: The evil bombers, which started showing up in Super Bomberman 2.
  • One world in Super Bomberman pitted you against waves of unnamed evil Bombermen built by one of the game's main villains.
• Mon: The Charaboms/Karabons.
• Monster Arena: Most towns in Bomberman Tournament had arenas for Karabon fighting.
• Monster Clown: The boss of the second world in Super Bomberman is a giant clown head.
• 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 lifted from straight from the Famicom/NES Bomberman.
• Mutually Exclusive Powerups: The piercing bombs and the manually thrown bombs.
  • In Neo Bomberman, Piercing and Remote. Using cheats to force these to stack results in invisible bombs.
  • Super Bomberman 5 also has Land Mines and Pursuing Bombs. Even though Pro Action Replay codes could let you combine Piercing and Remote, those other two still won't stack with Remote.
  • Also, if a game has both Bomb Kick and Bomb Walk abilities (again, SB5), they may not be able to overlap either.
  • The first Super Bomberman averts this by letting you have both piercing (colored red instead of having spikes like in later games) and remote bombs at the same time without cheats. They'll just be red remote bombs, and have both powers at once.
  • And of course you can only ride one Powerup Mount at once (though you can use most of your other powerups while riding them).
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: To be fair, you probably didn't expect Sirius to betray you in Bomberman 64.
• No Mouth: 90% of the cast lacks any facial features besides eyes.
• 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.
• Oh Crap: In the multiplayer mode of Bomberman Jetters, the characters will say some things when they realize they're stuck between bombs, like:

Oh no!!! AAAAHHHHHH!!!

• • Even if they don't audibly cry out in despair, they have special Oh Crap animations in Saturn Bomberman and Bomberman Tournament, perhaps others.
• 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). Later games just give you a heart-based health meter a la The Legend of Zelda, complete with Heart Containers either purchased from shops or hidden in the game world.
• One Bullet At a Time: Without powerups, you can only have one bomb placed on the screen at a time.
• One Game for the Price of Two: The Charaboms in the Bomberman MAX games, as you'd expect of games with a Mons element.
• 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 NES 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, which inflicts a random disease to Bomberman, such as reducing blast power to 1 temporarily or giving you, err, bomb diarrhea (well, at least that's how its referred to in the Mega Bomberman booklet).
  • (Baku) Bomberman 64 featured an "Evil" item, which activated a stage-wide effect potentially affecting all players. Some effects include a tornado, maxing out everyone's bomb count and explosion size, and an "evil disco light" that saturated the screen with bright colours, making it hard to see the action.
• Pokémon-Speak: The Charaboms/Karabons, depending on which game it is. Sometimes they can only say their name or some sort of roar and other times they're perfectly capable of speech, but occasionally throw their name into sentences like a Verbal Tic. In The Second Attack!, Pommy seemed to fit somewhere between these two lines by being a Third Person Person.
  • Rui-Rui is also prone to this in Bomberman B Daman Bakugaiden. Other B-Darons don't necessarily repeat their given names, but do have a Verbal Tic and don't actually speak.
• 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.
• Powerup Mount: Louie/Rooey the kangaroo/rabbit thing in some games, dinosaurs or miscellaneous critters in others.
• 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 big bird, Baruda, the sphinx-like Bolban, and the lusty catgirl Natia with her pet robo-spider Chronus.
• Recurring Boss: Nitros in HERO. For the first three planets, he's fought at the end of the second area, but on Mazone, he's fought at the beginning of the third instead.
• Recursive Adaptation: The Jetters game.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Pommy, first introduced in Bomberman 64: The Second Attack!, and frequently seen thereafter as a Charabom/Karabon. For that matter, just about EVERY Charabom/Karabon.
  • The cute rabbit/kangaroo-like critters Bomberman can ride on from the 3rd 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.
  • The dinos in Saturn Bomberman are also quite adorable. Then there's most of the B-Darons in the Bomberman B Daman Bakugaiden anime/manga Spin-Off, ESPECIALLY Rui-Rui, who causes a lot of Cuteness Proximity reactions. And then gets dumped by some high school girls when they find something even cuter. The Second Attack! has various adorable critters to represent AI players in Battle Mode. And, hell, how about the cute-looking things in each stage that kills you on contact? Let's just say that there's enough of these in the Bomberman franchise to give someone a Cuteness Overload.
• Rule of Fun
• Secret Level: Bomberman Hero has a surprising amount of these, including revisiting a flying and underwater stage on foot as the Golden Bomber, a snowboard race against a snowman enemy, a second collection quest, and a few completely new stages accessed by mashing Start as you boot up the N64.
• Shout-Out: Rather numerously as of late, but also in the past. The opening and intro to Online show Bomberman wearing an orange suit similair to Goku's.
• Single Biome Planet: Bomberman HERO features these with Primus (a swampy/forested planet) and Kanatia (the Lethal Lava Land and Build Like an Egyptian mixture, although there are a couple of crystal cave levels there). However, it appears that planet Bomber is very Earth-like and Mazone had a small jungle at its equator (considering it was a snowy planet).
• The Smurfette Principle: Up until Bomberman 64: The Second Attack!, there were few females.
  • Bomberman 64 has just Artemis (a female sidekick to Altair) and Mantis (A giant spider and the boss of White Glacier), with the latter being tougher than the first. Bomberman Hero goes off with the Damsel in Distress Princess Millian and the token female villain Natia, with Millian being the important part of the plot and Natia being just some big help to the Big Bad.
  • And before the 64 games, the series female cast was Pretty Bomber and Lady Bomber. The former of the two would go on to fulfill this role by appearing in future Bomberman games as the only female character.
• Spell My Name with an "S": Bagular/Buggler/Bagura, the recurring Big Bad.
  • "Charaboms" in Bomberman MAX, then "Karabons" in Bomberman Tournament, then back to "Charaboms" in Generation.
  • Louie/Rooey, the kangaroo-like critters you ride. The eventual decision seems to be that the species is named "Rooey", while the specific one that appeared in Bomberman Hero is named "Louie".
• Spin-Off: The Bomberman Land series on the DS and PSP, which shifts the focus to bomb-based Mini Games.
  • Another is Bomber King, which was developed by Hudson and then retitled Robo Warrior in North America when Jaleco acquired the publishing rights.
  • Bomberman Wars on the Sega Saturn, which is more of a strategy JRPG.
  • Bomberman B Daman Bakugaiden, which actually kickstarted the whole B-Daman line of toys.
  • Bomberman Fantasy Race on the PlayStation. As you'd expect, it's more like Mario Kart, except everyone's riding a rooi or dino. Here's some video footage. There's a later Japan-exclusive game called Bomberman Kart and its remake Bomberman Kart DX that's even more shameless about its inspirations.
• Spinning Out of Here: In Bomberman Tournament, each Karabon has its own special ability that can help Bomberman when exploring (some are passive, others need to be activated manually). Pommy (your first ally and a Captain Ersatz of Kirby and Pikachu) has the ability to transport Bomberman to any (major) town he's previously visited. Using this power causes Bomberman to spin rapidly before he's launched into the sky and lands in his intended destination.
• Spotlight-Stealing Title: When the first Bomberman game got released in the U.S., it got Wario as a playable character. True to his character, the game was renamed to Wario Blast – Featuring Bomberman.
• Stellar Name: Bomberman 64 features characters named Sirius, Orion, Regulus, Altair and Vega.
• Stuff Blowing Up: This speaks for itself.
• Super Drowning Skills: This is lampshaded in Bomberman 64: The Second Attack! multiple times in the form of Pommy's taunts to the main character for his inability to swim down to noticeable underwater ruins in Aquanet, as well as his fear of crawling through a pipe filled with running water.
  • Especially irritating in Bomberman HERO, where Mercy Invincibility does not protect Bomberman from losing a block of health from falling in water and then leaping back out...and then it's averted with the Marine Bomber gear in certain levels.
• Super Title 64 Advance: Bomberman probably has more examples than any other series (including Mario). Super Bomberman, Mega Bomberman, Neo Bomberman, Saturn Bomberman, Bomberman 64...need I go on? It helps that practically every game console and computer OS has a version of Bomberman released for it.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The Four Bomber Kings (plus Great Bomber) to the Five Dastardly Bombers in Super Bomberman 4.
• 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.
  • Assault Bomber from Generations seems to love this trope, from his psychotic attack patterns, to his entrance in which he enters the arena in a giant meteor that crashes into the center of the arena then explodes.
  • You fart bombs. There IS no other kind of kill.
• Third Person Person: "Pommy's name is Pommy!"
• Throw Down the Bomblet: Bomberman himself, of course, along with numerous other characters.
• Timed Mission: All of the classic 2D games which don't play like "Bomberman meets The Legend of Zelda" have a timer. If Bomberman doesn't complete the stage in time, he spontaneously dies for no logical reason. Averted in all of the 3D games, for the most part.
• True Final Boss: Sirius in Bomberman 64.
  • In Super Bomberman 2, Plasma Bomber's doomsday device fulfills this role quite surprisingly by killing Plasma Bomber just before he could complete a Heel Face Turn then attacks Bomberman.
  • Evil Bomber in Bomberman HERO.
  • Dr. Mechadoc in the Jetters game.
  • In The Second Attack!, the true final boss is GOD.
  • The Chaos Bomber in Bomberman Quest.
• Underwater Boss Battle: The rematch with Bolban in Bomberman Hero takes place underwater, using the Bomber Marine.
• Unexpected Shmup Level: Some of the underwater and air levels in Bomberman Hero.
• Black Holes Suck: Black hole bombs in Bomberman 64: The Second Attack!.
  • For that matter, the black hole Bomberman and everything else is stuck in during that same game, because everything isn't crushed into a very dense sphere in the middle. The antagonists even have these Black Hole Generators that must be destroyed, which may be why they don't act like actual black holes.
• Unstable Equilibrium: Most Bomberman games have the "power-up" style of this; if you're good enough to stack up a few good power-ups before dying, you have a much easier game ahead of you.
• 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 Black Bomber, or Cool Black as he is also known as, says "dude" quite often in the Land games.
• Whale Egg: The kangaroos/Rooeys hatch out of these in most games as a powerup.
• Worthy Opponent: Regulus in the N64 games. Especially in The Second Attack.
• You!: Sirius to Regulus, before the final final battle in Bomberman 64.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Spoken word for word by Sirius to Bomberman after Altair has been killed.