Bomberman Max

Bomberman Max: Blue Champion/Red Challenger
Also known as: Bomberman Max: Hikari no Yuusha/Yami no Senshi (JP) Developer: Hudson Soft Publishers: Vatical (US), Hudson Soft (JP) Platform: Game Boy Color Released in JP: December 17, 1999 Released in US: May 14, 2000 This game has unused playable characters. This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused graphics. This game has a hidden sound test.

To do: An extremely rare version of this game has been dumped. See if there's any differences from the retail version. Also, check out the Ain version of the game as it has a few differences from the retail version.

Bomberman Max marked the first appearance of Bomberman protege Max, as well as Charaboms, little critters you have to rescue and can use to battle, just like that...other...game... whatever it was.

The only differences between the two games are which levels are available, Charaboms to find, and who you play as.

Sound Test

A sound test exists in all versions of the game. Press Right, Left, Right, Right, Left, Left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Left, Right at the main menu, then choose any option to access it.

Unused Charaboms?

To do: Whip up those GG codes.

Taking up the two empty spaces on the Charabom select screen are Heat Rock and Oct Kong, who both start at level 50 and use the elemental combinations Fire/Water/Rock and Water/Rock/Electric, respectively. They may be enabled by setting SRAM addresses A1F0 and A1F8 to 01, meaning that a Game Genie or emulator with a memory editor will be required to do this.

Debug Menu Text

Text for a debug menu, identical to the one in Pocket Bomberman, can be found starting at x28203:

INIT
TITLE DEMO
MODE SELECT
1 NORMAL
2 JUMP
3 GB KISS

PASSWORD
STRAT 0000

NORMAL GAME
WORLD CLEAR
GAME OVER
ENDING
LEVEL SELECT
JUMP GAME
RANKING
WORLD EVENT
STAGE EVENT

TEST MENU
1 SCREENTEST
2 PARTSTEST
3 PIECETEST
4 SOUNDTEST
5 ROMTEST
6 OBJECTTEST
7 EXIT

SCREEN

PARTS

PIECE

SOUND
ROM DISPLAY

And another one is located in the same block with Sound Test mode resources at 0x14A107:

0SCREEN TEST
1PARTS  TEST
2PIECE  TEST
3SOUND  TEST
4ROM    TEST
5SPRITE TEST
6EXIT

and the rest of strings at 0x14A29E:

PARTS

PICE

SOUND

ROM DISPLAY

There is the code to display these string resources in the ROM but no code to use them at all.