Pocket Bomberman

Bomberman takes a break from the top-view gameplay. Originally released as a Super Game Boy-compatible title in 1997, and later released as a Game Boy Color launch title in 1998.

Debug Menu


Apply the above patch to a Japanese v1.0 ROM. The game will start out in the main test menu. There are no color palettes used in this menu, so a Super Game Boy will show the previous screen's palette.

SCREENTEST
Test various tile maps to be used during gameplay. Press A to switch between display mode ("DISPLAY") where up/down changes tile map or scrolling mode ("SCROLL") where directional pad scrolls. Each tile map is supposed to be used with a specific primary and secondary graphics bank. The unmodified ROM has all but the pause screen on default values. The patch assigns "correct" banks to all but two entries: and.

Switching display modes is not possible properly without the patch, because there is a bug in the original menu code that will read the same press twice, thus resulting in turning scroll mode on followed by turning scroll mode off immediately afterwards.



To access the debug menus on hardware, use the Game Genie code (US, monochrome),  (Japan, monochrome), or  (Game Boy Color version) to replace the main menu with the (slightly broken) debug menu. Pressing A toggles a marker on each CHR image, probably a marker to help the programmers keep track of the current image they're working on or checking for bugs or inconsistencies.

PARTSTEST
Test parts, i.e. one-tile and multi-tile blocks used to create the in-game world.

PIECETEST


Test menu tile maps (with encoding conversion from ASCII) shown at a {{hex|0x04} by {{hex|0x04} tile offset from top left corner. This is the routine that actually display the test menu as well. Among the more interesting menus are early mode select and password screens (typos inclusive).

Many of the other screens were likely placeholders text for screens that are now graphical only (e.g. Game Over, Title Screen):

INIT TITLE DEMO NORMAL GAME WORLD CLEAR GAME OVER ENDING LEVEL SELECT JUMP GAME RANKING WORLD EVENT STAGE EVENT SCREEN PARTS PIECE SOUND ROM DISPLAY

Fun fact: Piece test is likely named after the routine that assembles the text piece-wise as opposed to just copying a tilemap onto the screen.

SOUNDTEST
Test all the sound effects in the game. Game Genie code will allow you to test the music instead of the sound effects.

ROMTEST
Graphic data is organized into banks in Pocket Bomber Man. Here you can look at each bank individually.

OBJECTTEST
Supposed to be a sprite test, but not working. This routine heavily depends on external screen update routines that once resided inside the main loop. However, these are now inside the gameplay loop only. So this menu prepares the sprite data of one sprite at by  of the currently selected kind, but this data is never converted to an active OAM sprite, so the screen stays blank.

EXIT
Returns you to the previous state of the state machine.

Development Super Game Boy Borders
Among the screen test tilemaps that can be found using the SCREENTEST test menu mentioned above are the following two "drafts" or the Super Game Boy border using only Game Boy tiles instead of SNES tiles. The "normal game" border is missing one of its graphics banks and thus a major portion of the border graphics although the tilemap is complete.

Region Differences
Super Game Boy borders were changed to English from Japanese in the international versions.

GB Kiss
An additional option is accessible with the Japanese version, but only on a regular Game Boy. This relied on a cart's built-in infrared receiver and that there were two carts close to each other. This was used for exchanging and creating user-created maps.

Game Boy Color
Game Boy Color support was added in later North American and European releases. There is no Japanese version with this enhancement.