It’s Hudson’s Hi-Ten Bomberman, which has the honour of being the world’s very first high definition video game.
The game was only ever publicly playable twice, at the 1993 and 1994 Hudson Soft Gaming Caravan exhibitions. It’s important to note that, despite HDTVs not becoming widely available in the West until the late 1990′s, in Japan the technology had been established a little earlier, with plasma sets available (though not that common) at the time. They cost tens of thousands of dollars, sure, but they were available.
Hi-Ten Bomberman was built to take advantage of this. A modified version of the party/puzzler classic, it featured not just high-definition graphics, but support for 16:9 widescreen TV sets and could host a maximum of ten players.
Just half the number of players in a game of Hi-Ten Bomberman
Anyone who’s played Bomberman will be able to imagine how awesome having ten players at once would be. Those ten could be split a number of ways, too, whether it be five teams of two, two teams of five, three teams of three or a ten-man fight to the death.
The game was not running on any existing console of the time; instead, it was powered by a custom piece of PC hardware called “Tetsujin”, which was hooked up to a HDTV.
A report from someone who’s actually played the game said it went above and beyond a mere technical demonstration, as it “had been properly tested and bug checked” and even featured “lots of power ups and a couple of things that were (at that time) new to the series”.
Interestingly, while “Tetsujin” evolved into the hardware that would become Hudson’s short-lived PC-FX console, Hi-Ten Bomberman was never released for the system. It was, however, later ported to the Sega Saturn, though in doing so it obviously lost its HD graphics.
While the game has never surfaced for download or emulation, we do at least have the good fortune of seeing this recorded footage from the 1993 Hudson Soft Gaming Caravan, in which the game (and it’s amazing control ports) are clearly visible.
Hi-Ten Bomberman! [Lost Levels, via GSW] [Hi-Ten Bomberman (unreleased) vs Saturn Bomberman @ NeoGaf]
miniluv101
Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 2:48 PMWe gave the 10 player Bomberman a go on the SS on occasion. The field was actually ridiculously large and couldn’t hold a candle to the standard mode with 8 bombers. Still nice to know that I was playing a (ported) version of gaming lore!
AnonymousPessimist
Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 2:59 PMAnyone who asks if it can run Crysis will be sucker punched.
Benjamin Swinbanks
Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 3:30 PMCan it?
Peter Richards
Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 4:22 PMMaking them watch that movie is too cruel a punishment, even for that most unforgivable of crimes.
Todd
Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 3:00 PMI actually remember when this came out and was on public demo.
Bomberman used to rock back in the day.
002
Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 4:46 PMBomberman will never stop rockin’, son.
Mark Serrels
Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 4:47 PMBelee dat.
djmcbell
Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 4:39 PMNever heard of this game, but that’s not surprising.
Holy crap that’s a fat Bomberman on the title screen!
Used to enjoy Saturn Bomberman, on which I gave the 10-player mode a go from time to time. On my crappy old 14 inch screen that was just a tad difficult to make out what was going on!
Jim Smith
Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 8:14 PMInteresting to see just how long it takes for consumer technology like HD TV’s to take off. I had no idea HD gaming was available even in PS2 days.
I hadn’t even heard of HD TV’s until 360 and PS3 came out.
Aaron
Tuesday, March 13, 2012 at 6:51 AMWhile I love Saturn Bomberman, it looks like Hi-Ten completely outshines Saturn Bomberman’s 10-player mode. I mean look at the graphics, they’re STUNNING in Hi-Ten while Saturn’s 10-player mode looks like an NES game.