Trying to understand Hi-Ten Bomberman - What is was and what it was not

[handygrafx]

This thread back is here to at least partly help to clear up the confusion about Hi-Ten Bomberman. I certainly don't know everything about it myself. So I am relying on those that do have some actual knowledge, info, understanding, etc. 

Thanks and credit to Assembler and Thibaut for information, video and pictures.

The easy part, what Hi-Ten Bomberman was not:

*was not a game that used two PC-Engine or PCE CoreGrafx systems linked together, as often believed.

*was not a PC-FX game or game-demo, as also often believed. 

*It was also, AFAIK, not made for PC-FX's forefather, Hudson's Project Tetsujin / IronMan, the 32-bit prototype board from 1992. I used to think it was. Okay and I suppose there's *some* possibility that Hi-Ten used this, but I doubt it. Hi-Ten might have been the perfect game for PC-FX's launch,  but it had nothing to do with PC-FX.  I guess it's very possible that Hudson had plans to bring Hi-Ten over to the PC-FX, but that a completely different story from the common misconception that Hi-Ten was running on PC-FX for demo & tournament purposes and just never came out commercially.

*Hi-Ten was also *not* converted to the Saturn as Saturn Bomberman.  Only some of the characters and the idea/desire to do a 10 player game on Saturn, came from Hi-Ten, not the actual coding / Hi-Ten game itself.


Now the hard part, what Hi-Ten Bomberman was:

*was developed by Katsuhiro Nozawa (I assume, at Hudsun Soft)
*was developed for / ran on a combination of several pieces of hardware.
AFAIK  ( andthis is where I might be partly wrong, or incomplete, etc)

* an NEC computer / computer board of some sort, be it a standard NEC computer (unlikely) or perhaps some custom system (more likely)
* some fancy equipment to generate the HD image 
* one or two CoreGrafx II systems for player control input.
* CoreGrafx II pads to play
* a large plasma HDTV for display. 


When we think of HD today, we think of 1080i, 1080p and 720p.  This was not the standard in Japan of the late 80s and early 90s.  Anything above 480i and 4:3  would've been considered HD then, even 480p + widescreen.  I don't know what resolution Hi-Ten Bomberman used. All I know is that it was higher than anything PCE/CoreGrafx/SuperGrafx could do.  Also higher than what Saturn did in its Bomberman.  It probably was not very high resolution or "true HD"  but it was certainly widescreen.


There were two versions of the game

Hi-Ten Bomberman


Hi-Ten KaraBom



other pictures (thanks Thibaut)


 




 

 

 

 

 

 




See these threads on the subject (where a lot of the info I've posted comes from)
http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2095
http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13158
http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11126&page=2

(thanks Assembler!)


As I said before, Saturn Bomberman is completely different, it's not a conversion or port of
Hi-Ten Bomberman Hi-Ten KaraBom
 
Hi-Ten ran in some standard of high-def, and widescreen.   Saturn Bomberman did not run in any HD resolution and did not run in widescreen.  The graphics, the gameplay features,  between them are different. It seems Hudson did take a few of the features from Hi-Ten for Saturn Bomberman's 10-player mode, such as Bonk as a playable character, but otherwise the Hi-Ten experience never came home.

comparison:

Hi-Ten


Saturn Bomberman's 10-player mode




Any accurate additions, corrections, etc would be appreciated.

[Black Tiger]

You've got some pretty cool info there. However, regardless of how many assets from the Hi-Ten games made it into Saturn Bomberman, SB is definitely the retail spawn of those demos. If you look at SB's Wide Battle mode and it's Battle mode in general, its very similar to the Hi-Tens, and pretty much every other Bomberman game since is not.


Just as Tengai Makyou III Namida PS2-




Is still the spawn of Tengai Makyou III Namida PCE-




...regardless of the differences between what little we saw of the early art and the final product.

Many games have jumped platforms without sharing actual code (Too Human, Kameo, Shenmue, etc).

[handygrafx]

Yeah, it's  obvious that Saturn Bomberman  of 1996 was inspired by Hi-Ten Bomberman of 1993. 

Hi-Ten was the only 10-player Bomberman and the only one to have Bonk (and some other characters) playable, and these features showed up in the Saturn game.   

However there were things changed/missing in the Saturn 10-player mode, which is totally new, rebuilt from Hi-Ten.

[GUTS]

Widescreen bomberman sounds awesome, its a shame they didn't add support for it in the Saturn version like Sega did with a few Saturn games (like Panzer Dragoon II).

[ParanoiaDragon]

Wait, I don't recall hearing about Namida being for the PCE, only the PC-FX, that's wierd..

[spenoza]

My understanding was that the Saturn 10-player mode supported widescreen and, in fact, encouraged it so that all players could see what was going on. Regular battle mode is 4:3 but 10-player supports wide.

[Necromancer]

My understanding was that the Saturn 10-player mode supported widescreen and, in fact, encouraged it so that all players could see what was going on. Regular battle mode is 4:3 but 10-player supports wide.

From Wikipedia (which is always correct):

If the number of players in a game exceeds eight, the game is played on a widescreen arena, shrinking the characters and blocks to tiny proportions, making the playing field very large.

[Kitsunexus]

I doubt there were plasma TVs back then.

[nat]

I doubt there were plasma TVs back then.

On the contrary.

For the nominal fee of $80,000 you could have one right in your living room.

[Kitsunexus]

I doubt there were plasma TVs back then.

On the contrary.

For the nominal fee of $80,000 you could have one right in your living room.

My bad.

[nat]

I bet Bill Gates had one back then.

[handygrafx]

I doubt there were plasma TVs back then.

Amazingly there were plasma TVs back then in Japan      
http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=189758&postcount=20

plasma, last time I checked they didn't exist back then

100% wrong, they had plasma TV's in 1993.

Assembler knows what he's talking about 

[SignOfZeta]

They had plasma displays even before that. Those monochrome green "portable" 286 computers were plasma.

[MissaFX]

They had plasma displays even before that. Those monochrome green "portable" 286 computers were plasma.

What about things like the portable Kaypro?

[nat]

I think the Kaypro was LCD.