竹間淳 – Bomberman Hero

June 1, 1998 • NTT Publishing

While Tetrisphere may have been one of the two first console games I owned, its companion Bomberman Hero was much more memorable to me. Its platforming-adventure style not only helped cement my later taste for N64 games, but its music was also enthralling to me at the time. And it's still quite a good listen, too; it may be more kid-friendly than your run-of-the-mill gritty, hardcore drum and bass, but there's a lot of good electronic music here which not only accompanied the game well but stands on its own as a great album.

While admittedly most of the music has a slightly campy, cheesy feel to it, I don't see that as a bad thing—the catchy little melodies are great ("Redial" for a good early example, not to mention "Zip"'s lovely marimba) and the soundtrack has a very fun feeling to it throughout, even on the darker tracks ("darker" isn't saying a whole lot). The cheesiness is also often undermined by some complex drum lines, gritty atmosphere, noisy background sounds, and synthy glitches, which contrast the upbeatness pretty well—while it may be music for a kids' game, it's definitely not amateurly-composed.

Like many game soundtracks, this one has a lot of styles thrown in it; most tracks are drum and bass oriented but there's a fair bit of minimal / atmospheric house and techno as well—even a touch of jazz. The album still holds together well and has a fairly unified sound, even though—as with a lot of game music, many of the tracks here are slightly themed. There are obvious water-level tracks, factory-level tracks, etc., and while the theming is done effectively in-game, on the album everything still meshes together well enough. It's fairly impressive. And, of course, sticking around until the final track "Loom" is a good idea: it's a more ambient / Japanese folk fusion track, which never appeared in the game and feels a bit out of place but is still pretty neat (and quite beautiful).

So while my appreciation for Bomberman Hero's great music can probably be attributed to fond memories of countless hours spent blowing up polygons back in the day, the soundtrack still holds up in my eyes as a great showcase of different electronic styles and a testament to composer Jun Chikuma's talent. While the game may not appeal to many people (and it's lost a bit of its charm for me too) the music is definitely worth a listen.

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