Coming out a mere six months after the first Bomberman game on N64, this Bomberman game seems like it was developed as a separate take on Bomberman rather than a sequel to Bomberman 64 (it actually started out as a Bonk game). This focuses solely on platforming rather than the more puzzle-orientated Bomberman 64, but unfortunately doesn’t so much with it.

Bomberman Hero is made up of a lot of short, linear levels, ether played from side to side or up into the screen. You collect gems, kill enemies and try to get to the door. The main challenge is from the poor depth perception and rather naff jump, with the difficulty of the first level and final level being pretty much the same. Very few levels stand out, and the ones that do (one that adds a lot of fog and one on moving platforms) do so because they’re particularly bad.

There are a few types of vehicle levels, which all feel like slow and boring copies of Star Fox 64. Move into the screen, firing off torpedoes while avoiding enemies.

Bosses are a particular nuisance, not so much that their attacks are difficult to dodge, but rather because they have a lot of health and take ages to defeat – the last world before the ending being comprised of repeated boss sections before the final boss.

Like Bomberman 64, there is a hidden final bit of story, but the game is far to dull to hunt for all the collectibles required to do so – and it’s just more of the same, really dull gameplay. It’s nowhere near as tedious as Bobmerman 64, it’s just a really boring and average platformer.

Incidentally, despite Bomberman being legendary for multiplayer, Bobmerman Hero has no multiplayer whatsoever.

This is a game I rented as a kid but got stuck in and never ended up beating. I remembered liking it a fair bit, but when I picked it up a couple years back I bounced off it hard. This time I ended up liking it more than ever, and I completed the main game 100%, even getting all the gold medals in addition to the purple ball thingies. I played through the Japanese version, and the game doesn't keep track of how long you've played it (and neither did I), so I really have no idea how long it took me ^^;

Where Baku Bomberman 1 and 2 are more like "classic Bomberman meets action platformer game", Bomberman Hero is Bomberman staring in a proper action platformer. In an intro that is a delightfully silly homage to Star Wars Episode IV, Princess Mirian is captured by the bad guys while trying to flee them in a tiny escape ship, and gives her robot companion Pibot a very important data disc to escape with to find Bomberman. It's a very lighthearted story that doesn't take itself seriously at all, but it's a delightful framework for the adventure with how campy and colorful it is. The game itself is overall very colorful and nice looking with a good soundtrack to boot (in grand Hudson fashion).

The gameplay is much more standard action platformer than either Baku Bomberman game. You can jump with the A button, throw bombs with the B button, kick bombs with down on the C-stick. You can tilt the camera with the other C buttons, but only temporarily. The game is played with a fixed camera going through linear stages one at a time, and for the most part the camera is never really an issue (on the normal final boss it can be a bit awkward, is all). There are point totals to aim for in each level (which are annoyingly only told to you after you beat the stage XP), and getting a 5-rank in all the stages unlocks a secret 6th world after you beat the normal final boss. The point challenges for the boss levels themselves are very cleverly done, with your score starting at 10,000 and counting down to 0, so they're more like time attack challenges.

The normal platforming stages rarely outstay their welcomes, even if ultimately they don't have a ton of variety to them. Bomberman controls quite well, but throwing bombs can be a bit of an inexact science at first and takes a bit to get used to, as aiming a shot diagonally is something the game often wants you to do but doesn't make easy XP. There are also many vehicle stages. They're gimmick levels that range from Star Fox-like Bomb Jetpack levels, similar but more controlled (you can go backwards if you want) underwater levels, infrequent but very easy to control Bomb-Copter levels, and the utterly terribly hoverboarding stages (which there are mercifully only two of). The vehicle stages aren't so bad if you're not aiming to hit the point totals on every level, and even then the point totals in them are often very mercifully low compared to the total point totals possible to get in each level. The hoverboarding parts are easily the worst and most difficult parts of the game, but overall the game itself is fairly easy.

Verdict: Recommended. It's not gonna set your world on fire, but it's something a bit different and it's a very competently put together game. If you like 3D platformers on the N64 and want something that's a little different from all the collectathons on the platform, this game can be a great way to spend a weekend. It's a bit of an oddball in that it's probably the only console Bomberman game to lack a multiplayer mode of any kind, but it's a good single-player experience that's easily worth $10 at least.

Yes, it's the Redial song game.

This is now Bomberman's second attempt at being a 3D platformer and he honestly did a pretty good job at it. Compared to Bomberman 64 this game feels a whole lot more similar to something like Rayman 2 or Mario 64 where it's more based on tight platforming and fast-paced combat about throwing bombs unlike how Bomberman 64 felt more like a compilation of weird diorama stages more based on a specific puzzle. It also isn't 3 hours long like Bomberman 64 and it is around 6-7 hours if you take your time making it the longest Bomberman game to date maybe with Super Bomberman 5 being close to it.

This game has a whole lot of stages, short stages, around 60 stages actually with 5 worlds in total. They are usually straightforward and just require you to get to the end of a platforming section or sometimes ask you to find key items to open a door and move on in a small area. Each stage contains multiple exits which sometimes skip some levels and I honestly can't tell if that's useful at all I don't feel any type of freedom it just makes the stage a bit more confusing for nothing.
But hey, it's a platformer right it surely has collectables and a fun 100% completion playthrough, right? Nope, it sucks! In each stage, you can collect gems to gain a total score for each stage and the goal is to get a specific score to get the best medal so if you want all score medals you'll have to kill every enemy in a stage and find all of the useless crystals, that not fun. At the end of each world, you get a global medal combining all of your scores and gives you a medal based on it, do mind that for each world medal, you can get a red, blue, bronze, silver, and gold medal but only the gold medal matters SO WHY BOTHER GIVING YOU SOMETHING THAT DOESNT DO ANYTHING! Anyway, 3 gold unlocks a shitty slider minigame, 6 gold unlocks a shitty treasure hunt quest where you go back to old stages to find treasure with a really cool reward of nothing you just wasted your time, and finally, the good reward for 5 gold a secret 6th world based on Bomberman GB3, now this is a good reward. It's based on the Owen world from Bomberman GB3 and you even fight Evil Bomber! that's really awesome, too bad it's stuck behind a wall of utter garbage. And I even forgot to mention the Adok Bomb which looks like a purple orb, you need to collect all 24 of them to access the 6th world making it even more a chore to get there.

About the stages, they are usually hit or miss, some are a chore to get through but others can be chill, I personally never bothered with the scoring system so I just rushed each stage to get to the end as quickly as possible and I thought it was the most enjoyable way to play this game.
The boss fights were ok for the most part but far from fun, especially the Nitros fights, these suck. Actually, you know what's worse? The final world is a boss refight, this is probably my least favorite trope in video game worlds, but to their credit, they changed the boss fight to make them different but making them worse wasn't what I wanted.

Other than the gameplay the game looks decent, definitely an upgrade from Bomberman 64, and especially in the soundtrack department gosh this soundtrack goes hard! But only for the first two hours because you realize there's only a total of like 4 songs that loops over and over, really good songs but they do get old over time.

But overall I thought it was a fine 3D platformer and worth a quick playthrough. I did has issue with framerate at times like the game constantly felt really slow, I can't tell if it was coming from the emulation or the game itself.

adoro como todos os aspectos desse jogo transmitem uma sensação de inexperiência e experimentação, com desenvolvedores ainda n muito familiarizados com 3D tentando lidar com o hardware ainda um tanto q alien do Nintendo 64. é meio q lindo, e amo esse jogo de paixão. só talvez seja meio quebradinho demais as vezes e tenha chefes insuportáveis. mas tudo bem. eu desculpo ele.

destaque vai para a trilha sonora da Jun Chikuma. ela meio q consegue elevar todo jogo do Bomberman em q ela foi compositora, mas nesse aqui o trabalho dela está em outro nível. acho q Redial vai ficar pra sempre na minha cabeça. simplesmente maravilhosa.

This game got a rather poor reception from critics when it came out, largely due to its 'unpolished' nature and probably also to its not especially exciting or dynamic cut-scenes and story line in general (I think those last two in particular are highly overrated elements for a video game, but anyway). The other problem of course was that its main audience was Bomberman fans, and no previous Bomberman game was anything like an action platformer. The aggregate ratings it has today are actually not bad at all; basically average. Gamefaqs and Backloggd both have it at 3.5 out of 5. As for moiself, it has gradually grown and grown in my estimation over the twenty years since I picked it up, and at this point I've come to regard it as one of the greatest games I've ever played.

It's an unusual situation admittedly. The game isn't deep in the senses that the other games in my pantheon tend to be. The thing I started noticing was that it seemed to have just unlimited replay value for me. For one thing it's extremely, extremely fun. Throwing bombs in arcs is a mode of combat very unusual to see in games and Bomberman has this sort of moonwalk jump and it makes just going through the game a whole lotta fun. That and the superb and highly unusual, weirded-out technoesque score by renowned composer of Arabic music Jun Chikuma.

The structure of the game is a refreshing (especially for the time) throw-back to 2D games that were made of oodles of short levels, and this really seemed to fly in the face of the N64 platformers I was seeing at the time — Mario 64, the Banjo games, Donkey Kong 64 — almost all of which had a handful or so of huge levels that took for ever to get through (and in most of these games the levels all seemed to be basically round and with a great big towering structure in the centre). And the rest — whether it was the Zelda games, Bomberman 64, Quest 64, Jet Force Gemini — everything was just fuckin' huge and took ages to get through and had no end of secrets you had to collect if you wanted to unlock the final world or whatever.

So by contrast the bite-sized-to-smallish levels in Bomberman Hero are really fun to bounce quickly along through (there are secrets and a hidden final world in Hero too, but it's not the same when it's little bitty levels somehow. Trust me on this). There are seventy-seven levels in the main story mode and the amazing thing is that all of them have their own shape (each one's got you running, climbing, winding around in a different direction) and their own visual palette and their own ideas and quirks going on. That's probably one main reason the game doesn't get old for me. And still more variety's added through Bomberman's four vehicular transformations (plus a couple rides on Louie's back).

And the 'unpolished' quality just makes it more charming and more unique. A stripped-down polygonal world is of course a stylization in itself even if it's not by intention. I've seen many shots of beta-version N64 and GameCube games that look more mysterious and alluring than the finished products. And the lower-density graphics just make the game that much lighter and quicker and more fun to play. And that's its core selling point. Bomberman Hero's the funnest action platformer I've seen in my life.

A Bomberman like no other (except Bomberman pocket adventure on Game boy)
This game doesn't follow series tradition and basically does it's own thing, you can jump. That might sound mundane but Bomberman does not jump, he just doesn't (well except in this game obviously).

The way you attack in the game is bombs as you would probably expect, though you mainly throw them in this game.

The writing is terrible, I think they shouldn't have bothered with this games' plot, just skip the cutscenes thankfully that's an option, you wouldn't be missing anything.

It's a fun, decent action platformer, the platforming works momentum feels good and most levels are enjoyable to navigate.
Any time you have to use a vehicle the game takes a very steep drop in quality and enjoyability, it does add some needed variety and a few of the vehicle levels are fun, but most of them slow your character down a lot and remove the platforming element. Aside from the snowboarding levels, those quick and enjoyable though a bit unpolished.

For about every 6 good levels there's one dreadful boring one, but they usually won't take too long to get over with.
You will dread the underwater levels, you move extremely slow in addition to those levels running at 10fps for whatever reason, they leave a horrible impression.

The level design isn't very cohesive and you kind of just repeatedly stunlock enemies with your explosions until they blow up, it's not a very deep game, the "combat" is not it's strength, this is ok since the focus of the game is platforming and enemies are more of an obstacle.

This was an early N64 game and it's very noticeable, many N64 games have low quality blurred textures and this one doesn't try to hide it, it can be just ugly at times, some enemies are so poorly modeled that you can't even tell what they're supposed to be, there's some"charm" in it's simple visuals especially if you are nostalgic for this system.

I wouldn't say it's just bad looking overall, just that you will notice the blurry look it looks about as good as most mid-budget 3rd party N64 games.

There's a pretty good amount of levels and completion rewards just don't expect multiplayer, this game doesn't have it.

The most well known thing about Hero is the music, if you like "drum and bass" style it's legendary, it's one of my favorite game soundtracks on the N64 and it's well done for what it is, even if the tracks are short.
If you hate this style this will not change your mind.

For 3D Platformers you could do a lot worse, this one is pretty good all things considered.