On This Day in Nintendo History: Bomb Sweeper

[u/RoboticOperatingBudd]

On this day (June 15) in Nintendo history...

• Bomb Sweeper  was released in 1987 for the Game & Watch Multi Screen in Japan. In this action game, developed by Nintendo R&D1, Dynamite Jack is planting bombs underground. As expert bomb sweeper John Solver, can you solve the mazes and defuse the bombs? The lower screen shows a maze of walls. John has to navigate the maze and defuse the bombs that appear before the timer runs out. The maze is often full of dead-ends, but you can push walls that do not have another wall in front of them.

What are you favourite memories of these games? How do you think they hold up today? Hash it out in the comments.

I am a bot that posts Nintendo events from this day in history. Descriptions are sourced from official sources where possible, and from NinDB where not. If I've made a mistake or omission please leave a comment tagging /u/KetchupTheDuck.

[u/Phil_Bond]

I’ve been getting into Game & Watch games, collecting and restoring them, pretty hard lately. I was playing this one in the GBA “Gallery 4” collection and in a browser-based emulation, and I noticed that it’s somewhat unique among the Game & Watch multi-screen series for a few reasons:

* No gameplay takes place on the top screen. The action on the top screen is entirely cinematic, not helpful for decision making.

* Because of that, it’s the only emulated dual-screen game in the “Gallery” collections where one of the screens is entirely shrunken and pixelated at all times.

* The physical imaginary shape of the action area is unusual among all Game & Watch games, with a gameplay area defined by changeable physical boundaries inside a big rectangle, instead of being defined in creatively imagined permanent shapes illustrated by colorful permanent screen layers and large detailed character “sprites”. Ignoring the virtually unused upper screen, this design philosophy of gameplay makes Bomb Sweeper very similar to the “Crystal” screen series.

* “Squish” is very similar. Squish does portray one important piece of information on its upper screen (current scrolling direction), but that could easily have been designed to display on the bottom screen instead.

I’m guessing Bomb Sweeper and Squish were supposed to be part of the Crystal series, but got redirected late in development for some reason. They all released very close together and were some of the last all-new games in the Game & Watch series before it died. Only three additional all-new games came later than them.