Hudson's Bomberman is one of the most famous franchises of the '90s, having enjoyed instalments on a wide range of systems, including the NES, SNES, Mega Drive, Neo Geo and PC Engine.
In recent years, the property has fallen into the hands of Konami (which purchased original developer Hudson Soft in 2011 and absorbed it fully in 2012), which produced Super Bomberman R in 2017 and is working on a sequel to that game for this year.
However, that's not the only Bomberman title you'll get to play this year. Indie developer Sergey Slobodchikov (aka Marie Slipis) is creating Super Bomberman 2 Remix for the ZX Spectrum (thanks, Indie Retro News), and while this is obviously an unofficial venture, it gives the esteemed British home computer the sequel it has been waiting almost 40 years for.
You see, the original Bomberman (also known as Bakudan Otoko in Japan) was written as a tech demo for Hudson Soft's BASIC compiler, and in 1983, it would be released on computers such as the NEC PC-8801, Fujitsu FM-7 and Sharp MZ-700.
It was released in Europe on the MSX and ZX Spectrum as Eric and the Floaters (apparently to avoid any association with the Irish Republican Army, which was carrying out terrorist bombings at the time) and would later be ported in an enhanced form to the NES as Bomberman – the title which arguably kickstarted the franchise for most people.
Slobodchikov's upcoming title is effectively a port of the NES game to the Spectrum, with music from n1k-O and graphics by Joe Vondayl. According to Slobodchikov, Super Bomberman 2 Remix is close to being finished, and he just needs to "clean up a few loose ends". He adds that "even though it's a remake of the NES game, a lot of things are implemented differently (in my opinion, the game becomes more interesting)."
Editor's note: A previous version of this story incorrectly credited Alexey Khaydukov (AKA epsilon) as the developer. This has been fixed, and we apologise for any inconvenience caused by this error.