Super Bomberman R brought Bomberman back after twenty years, and the return is uneven. Konami developed and published the game, with HexaDrive co-developing, and it released worldwide as a Nintendo Switch launch title in March 2017. PlayStation 4, Windows and Xbox One versions followed in June 2018.
It is the sixth Super Bomberman installment and the first in the series since 1997’s Super Bomberman 5. It is also the first console Bomberman entry made after original series developer Hudson Soft dissolved in 2012. That is a long gap to fill, and Super Bomberman R fills it unevenly.
Trailer, via KONAMI公式.
The grid, the bombs, and the 50 stages
The core loop has not changed. Players move through a two-dimensional grid, trap opponents, and drop bombs to defeat them. Super Bomberman R keeps that rule and wraps it in 3D stages and photo-real graphics.
Story mode spans 50 stages. Two players can run it cooperatively, clearing each stage one by one. The game adds a new rule where clearing a stage is not just about wiping out every enemy. That twist gives the campaign some texture beyond the usual sweep.
Battle mode supports up to eight players and ships with 19 battlegrounds. Beyond the classic arena there are multi-level stages with springboards, ice patterns and moveable blocks, each with its own style. The variety is real. Whether it holds up over dozens of matches is another question.
A league ladder from Baby B to God
Online play runs on a league system: Baby A and B, Novice A and B, Amateur A and B, Pro A and B, Champ A and B, and God A and B. Advancement starts at Baby league B, where a player has to win matches to gather points and climb.
The ladder is a sound idea. It gives online battles a shape and a reason to keep returning, which the series has often lacked. The naming is also blunt enough to be funny: everyone begins as a Baby and a very small number of players ever reach God.
Grand Prix came with a November 2017 update. It puts 3 vs 3 battles into three arenas, offline or online. The goal is to collect as many gems as possible before time runs out, with new characters and unique abilities in the mix. An alternate mode, team fight, counts total wins by blow-ups.
The Bomberman Bros. and the Five Dastardly Bombers
The roster is the game’s best argument. Super Bomberman R has 27 characters, each with special abilities. That includes the eight Bomberman Bros. and the Five Dastardly Bombers, plus Konami crossover picks like Dracula Bomber, Vic Viper Bomber and Goemon Bomber.
The crossover characters are fan service, and they know it. Dracula Bomber and Vic Viper Bomber are not here to deepen the fiction. They are here because Konami has a vault and knows players will pay attention when it opens.
The story mode gives the Bros. distinct personalities. White is the eldest and most disciplined, and he tries to get his younger siblings to train. Black is lazy and egocentric. Pink cares more about fashion and gossip. Blue sleeps all day. Red is hot-tempered and reckless. Yellow is overly naive and innocent. Aqua has anger management issues. Green is a manipulative sneak who deceives everyone.
That is a sitcom cast dropped into a war story, and the game leans into it.
Planet Scrapheap and the black hole
The plot starts in a robot scrapyard on Planet Scrapheap. Emperor Buggler resurrects five robots to serve as his henchmen, the Five Dastardly Bombers. On Planet Bomber, White takes up Buggler’s challenge after the villain broadcasts a signal claiming his army has already conquered five planets of the Starry Sky Nebula: Brainwave, Lalaland, Scrapheap, Technopolis and Timbertree.
White forces his siblings to come along. They advance on the five worlds, solve problems tied to the conquests, and defeat Buggler’s army and his henchmen. Then Buggler dares them into outer space, where they learn he has built a black hole to destroy the universe while they were busy freeing planets.
Buggler summons his defeated henchmen to build a massive robot with all their powers. The Bombermen beat it. Buggler merges with the robot and grows. The Five Dastardly Bombers, now free of Buggler’s control, turn on him.
It is a Saturday-morning cartoon plot, and that is not a complaint. Bomberman has never needed a grim story. It needs a reason for eight characters to blow each other up, and Buggler supplies one.
Since its release in 1985, Bomberman has been a familiar party-battle game for many years.
Where Super Bomberman R lands
Super Bomberman R is a competent revival, not a great one. The 50-stage story mode and the eight-player battle mode give it two distinct halves, and the 19 battlegrounds and 27 characters give both halves enough to chew on. The Grand Prix update added 3 vs 3 play after launch, which suggests Konami kept working on the game rather than shipping it and walking away.
The problems are the ones that have followed Bomberman for decades. The single-player campaign is a grind through stages that rarely surprise. The battle mode is only as good as the people you play it with. The league system gives online matches structure, but structure is not the same as a reason to care.
What matters most is what the game represents. Bomberman went quiet for twenty years after Super Bomberman 5. Hudson Soft, the studio that built the series, dissolved in 2012. Super Bomberman R is the first console entry since then, and it put the franchise back in front of players.
A sequel, Super Bomberman R 2, was released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S as part of the Bomberman franchise’s 40th anniversary. A series that looked finished in 1997 now has a future.
Super Bomberman R is not the game that earns that future on its own merits. The 50 stages and the 27 characters and the 19 battlegrounds are a lot of content, but content is not the same as craft. The campaign runs long without running deep. The battle mode is fun in a room and thinner online. The crossover characters are a wink, not a design.
Still, the foundation is sound. Super Bomberman R is a revival that works because it remembers what Bomberman is: a simple rule, a grid, and a bomb. It does not reinvent that rule. It does not need to. It just needs to be worth playing. The critical score of 6.4 out of 10, an IGDB critic aggregate across 15 outlets, lands about where this game sits: a return that cleared the bar without clearing much else.
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