The more spoilery addendum to this post. Fortunately, it’s nowhere near as long as that monstrosity.
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In no particular order:
- It sort of sucks that the bombersibs don’t get multiplayer-only bonus abilities. They could’ve had a lot of fun with that since Konami bothered to give them personalities. The Dastardlies’ specials are all bomb-based, but Konami could take a page out of the Bomberman Jetters GC/PS2 game and give the bombersibs abilities not directly related to the kind of bombs they make, e.g., Blue’s special makes everyone else on the field fall asleep for a second or two, Green’s special lets him temporarily control another player on the field (like the Ghost ability from Bomberman 64), Aqua’s special is a fiery rage that detonates all explosives within range of her while also shielding her from them…things like that. If they had to keep some measure of tradition, they could just give White the Dangerous Bomb ability, which I believe Shirobon had in the BMJ game.
(If I keep referencing older games when bitching about SBR – or any other Bomberman game, really – it’s only because it continually irks me that the Bomberman series has so many good elements that don’t get properly developed or capitalized on because the team seems to acquire amnesia between every installment.) - The Karaoke –> Pretty –> ninth sibling revelation was a pleasant surprise. More thought than I would have ever expected out of Konami for a Bomberman game. This is the kind of expansive, extrapolative interpretation of the canon that I’d like to see more of in the future. (Still no clue why they felt the need to change Brain’s name to “Phantom,” though.)
- Despite looking relatively more human in SBR, the ending reveals that Buggler is apparently some sort of eldritch abomination: “It was the evil in the hearts of life-forms across the universe that created me… As long as that evil does not disappear…I shall always…always…return…” Which is another interesting twist to the canon. This also seems to leave open the possibility of Buggler returning in a future installment, either as the outright villain or as an eventual Hijacked by Ganon kinda scenario. I’m less sure about the chances of the Dastardlies returning. I’d love to see them again, but I’m not sure what else Konami would do with them unless they leveled up the writing further.
Or if they did a game where you played as the now-heroic Plasma Bomber accompanied by Magnet and the rest… - As much as I enjoy the bombersiblings, it continues to be a little weird that Konami stuffed so many of them into such a small game. I guess they really wanted to draw people’s attention to the single-player, but on further thought I find myself wondering about a “buddy cop”-style take on SB3, where good cop White and bad-guy-turned-bad-cop Black take on the Dastardlies while wisecracking with each other all the way.
- I do hope that we get more details on who created the bombersiblings. The obvious guess would be Dr. Ein, of course.
