Bomberman Legends

Development

According to Mike Mika, one of the original programmers, he and his colleagues were still in college but aspired to enter the video game industry. In 1994, the group traveled to Las Vegas and formed a game development company to discuss with multiple console manufacturers at SCES '94, aiming to obtain a development kit for systems still active on the market, such as the Nintendo Entertainment System. The team approached Atari Corporation and began discussions with Jeff Minter, who recommended they speak with Atari representative Normen Kowalewski; he told them to meet him behind the scenes at a hotel. At that location, Atari had a Jaguar development setup along with a prototype of the Atari Jaguar CD add-on for demonstration to third-party developers. Interested in acquiring a development kit, the team spoke with company representatives, reached an agreement, and purchased various hardware kits to program games for the system. During a brainstorming session, the team originally planned a spoof of the damsel in distress plot common in many titles, but publishers showed little interest, so they settled on creating a Bomberman title as their "dream game." Mike Mika contacted Hudson Soft online about developing a Bomberman game for the Jaguar, and after discussing with employee Bill Rich, Atari acquired the rights to the series. Development of Bomberman Legends began between late 1994 and early 1995, with the team looking at Super Bomberman 2 on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System as a standard and sending notes to Hudson about their development approach.