This was another game I completed during my stay in the hospital on the Switch Online services, but this time on the Super Famicom side of things. This was a game I'd never heard of (likely because it was localized as Ka-Blooey, and that's the version on the SNES Switch service despite the cover art there saying Bombuzal as well), but was very curious about. When it was unveiled in the most recent Nintendo announcement of new games coming to the Switch Online services, it seemed like just some puzzle game ported from European computers (which it is, originally being a Commodore 64 and Amiga game taking the honor of being the first piece of third-party software released for the Super Famicom). The most recent slate of games on the service seemed really underwhelming, and easily the most "why'd they even bother?" addition to those services yet, but I was determined to give this weird puzzle game a try. It ended up getting the good-puzzle parts of my brain working in happier ways than I'd originally intended, and I spent a bit over 10 hours beating it over several sittings, and I only had to look up three or four solutions~.

Bombuzal was made as just some puzzle game on the C64, and it has a story to match. Or rather, it has a total lack of story that's fitting for when it was made. You play as a weird blue thing (whom I just call "Bombuzal", but who in actuality seems to have never been given a name) whose only goal in life is to blow up bombs and not get blown up. The game really doesn't need a story, and I think it'd be silly to criticize it for not having one. This is a game about solving puzzles, and that's what it delivers!

The game has 130 levels where you play as your weird blue thing (from now on known as Bombuzal) trying to blow up all the red bombs on the stage while not getting blown up yourself. You move on a grid that can be viewed in a third-person isometric view, or in a direct top-down view. The latter is much easier to actually see and control with, so that's the one I basically always played with. You move on a grid of square tiles, and you can only move one tile off the bomb you're detonating when you decide it's time to blow. Bombs also detonate if hit by adjacent explosions, so you better make darn sure that you're not gonna get caught in the crossfire when you decide it's time to let things go to hell. There are all sorts of bombs that make up the game's stages (three sizes of normal bombs, two sizes of landmine (which don't blow up adjacent bombs and can't be manually detonated), as well as bombs that all explode at once and bombs that change size over time) as well as different tiles (breakable ones, switches, indestructible ones, and more), and while there are a good handful of levels that are more gag levels than anything (won in an obvious single move), for the most part each puzzle is a good challenge and the game does a good job of weaving shorter puzzles in between the longer and more complicated ones.

The game isn't free of problems though. On the more minor side, you have the difficulty and how the game has a life system. Now if you're playing on the Switch Online like I did, that isn't a problem, since save states and rewinds do a great job of making this game feel far more fair and fun, so you don't need to waste a bunch of time redoing everything you just did just because you accidentally walked off a ledge into death. Even if you aren't doing that, this version of the game gives you a four letter passcode every level, so the life system really barely matters other than affecting your high score.

Now this game also unintentionally makes a great entry for this month's TR theme of inferior ports, since this is a pretty significant port job from the C64 roots of Bombuzal. Now some elements of the port are good. In the original, you only got a password every four levels, and in this version they give you one every level. This version also has more and better music in addition to having prettier graphics (as one would hope for a game on the Super Famicom compared to a simple Commodore 64). However, beyond that, things get a bit more sour for the Super Famicom's first third party game. On a very objectively bad note, there's a bug in this version (a bomb bigger than it should be) that makes level 80 virtually impossible (you need to basically cheat and get lucky via the anti-idle system to beat it).

On a wider design issue, the prettier graphics are to blame. More difficult and later levels get HUGE, and you can't see the whole thing even when you use the start button to zoom out the map a bunch. This makes those levels that have switches that cause one thing (or even multiple things) to happen far away far far harder because you just can't see what you're doing, and it's like very difficult or impossible to move over to the portion of the map you can't see. You also can't move your actual controllable view screen until you're one tile away from the edge of the camera, making it very easy to die to the quick moving enemies if they're coming towards you. Basically every puzzle that I looked up the solution to was the result of me just not being able to see what the heck one or more of the level's many switches had actually affected. The C64 version's normal camera is zoomed out WAY further, and basically avoids all of these problems. Now this doesn't have nearly the degree of issues that the North American port of this has, as while Ka-Blooey may have much more music, it ONLY has the awful isometric camera view, which makes that version pretty hard to stomach even if level 80's bug is fixed. This version of the game is still totally enjoyable, but there are some not insignificant obstacles between you and your Bombuzaling.

The presentation is a solidly acceptable experience. The look of the game is basically a more colorful version of the previous Amiga port, and it has a vibe I'd best describe as simple environments (very simple, really) alongside creepy characters (especially Bombuzal himself). It works pretty well, and it more than does the job. The soundtrack is a bit harder to excuse, as while the music there is pretty good, there is a total of ONE stage track, so I hope you like that song, because it's the only one you'll be hearing through all 130 stages Xp. I kinda like the song, and I like the ending theme even more, but the sheer lack of music is difficult to excuse, even for a game SO early in the SFC's lifespan.


Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. If you like puzzle games, then this is a pretty darn solid and fun one on the SFC. I think it's most easily recommendable if you play it via a format that has save states and rewinds, but even without those, I think there's a fair amount of fun to be had here. I didn't really know what to expect from this game going in, but now that I've finished it, I'm pretty confident in saying that it's the shining star (or at least the shining-est star) of the most recent addition to the Switch Online retro services~.