I typically think of Bomber Man as a PC Engine game. Surely that was the platform where it became a well-polished game with a rich multimedia experience and gave Hudson Soft a unique character with its own level of recognition. But before that, there was this game. Bomber Man, but with a Japanese name (bakudan-dan, I believe, is the correct pronunciation) that translates to "bomb man". But even in this early rendition, they planted the seeds of the name of its future franchise as Bomber Man.

I don't know if the MZ-700 port is actually the first release of Bomber Man, but it's at least got to be in the running for the most primitive. As I probably mention in every MZ-700 game introduction, the MZ-700 doesn't have a native graphics mode. All graphics are simply system characters, mostly the "big square" character is used in this game.

But the concepts aren't too different. You run around with an unlimited number of bombs, which you plant in order to destroy blocks or the actual enemies. Sometimes destroying blocks will net you a treasure, sometimes an exit (actually, I've not uncovered this yet). If you destroy all your enemies, you get a countdown bonus and you move to the next level. All elements of the future Bomber Man series.

One difference is that, while it might look like there is, in fact there is not a variety of enemies. All enemies are the same blobs, but they change colors. It seems to me that they vary in aggression, with red being the most aggressive and yellow being the most placid.

The explosion in that second-to-last picture is not really a possible image, it must have been caught between frames, because the MZ-700 doesn't have that medium gray color, nor can it overlay the smoke on top of the yellow square near the center of it. But perhaps our brains can be tricked into thinking we saw that image.

And how about this early artist's rendition of Bomber Man? Doesn't look too much like the cartoonish character it later became. The skin tone seems to be the same and that's about it.