Nintendo 64 ad: Bomberman Hero Planet Exploder

I love these old N64-era magazine advertisements. They’re always extreme and radical even when they’re not supposed to be. This ad for Bomberman Hero, which I like to call ‘Planet exploder’, is one of those.

Explore new worlds, then blow them up.

Socket-head’s back on a seek-and-destroy-adventure. It’s Bomberman Hero on the N64. Within 5 new worlds, 60 new levels, and an arsenal of new gizmos to blow your mind.

The left-hand page features the green Primus Star with it’s two orbital rings. Now that I think of it, that picture looks really weird. First of all, the planet looks really similar to Jupiter. Here it is compared with a greenified version I made. It’s uncanny.

Second, a planet’s rings converge around its equator because of tidal forces, and Prima’s rings both appear to be at a 45 degree angle to its equator. Finally, they seem to have managed to out a shadow in for one ring but not for the other. I realise that it might be hidden beneath it, but if you look at the shadow that is there, it has some curvature so it’s strange that it doesn’t even peek out a little bit. Behind Primus, there appears to be two unknown planets, one pink and one blue.

The second page has the yellow Kanatia planet and an unknown red planet behind it. A blue Earth-like planet appears almost off the page.

For an ad that follows the game very closely in its depiction of Primus, it does include quite a few things that don’t exist in the game. You have those few planets, and also they don’t have bomb ‘fuses’ on them, they’re round in the game. Except for Gossick, that’s a weird one.

The Planet Exploder ad stays somewhat faithful to the game, since you do blow up Garaden Star after completing it, but none of the other do (as far as I remember). I guess it counts if you blow up a bunch of bombs on its surface though.