Bomb Boat

Bomb Boat is an ode to the Houthi movement a remake of Coron, a cute little maze game originally made for the PC-88 almost 20 years prior.

Arcade Remnants#

This game felt arcadey even on its first release on 8-bit home computers, but it gets to such a degree in this remake that it gets suspicious. Besides the traditionally arcade-like attract mode, there is a hurry up mechanic that may or may not have been nerfed as it only spawns a single enemy and, perhaps more tellingly, upon starting the game the player is given five credits with three lives each - the word "credit" being used. Indeed, there are accounts of this game being present at a location test at a Taito arcade in Shibuya in 2002, together with Sanvein, Battle Qix, and Keeper - all equally suspiciously arcadey games on the SuperLite budget series. If true, these games would've been made for the PS1-based Taito G-Net arcade board, with which Success was quite involved at the time. While no hard evidence whatsoever seem to have surfaced about this location test, most of these games indeed contain obvious remnants of an arcade version.

Mode Select#

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: Are there any remnants of the Original Mode? The original Coron had different maps, maybe that is what it was about?

Graphics for a mode selection screen, to be used with an unknown palette. The top option is "Arrange Mode", for one or two players, and the bottom one is "Original Mode", for one player only. Selecting start on the final version kicks you right into the game, in what is presumably the Arrange Mode, as a second player can join anytime.

Screen Test Graphics#

Graphics for the screen test usually present in arcade test modes.

Miscellaneous#

Meant for the title screen and possibly in game as well for a second player to join. The palette is likely wrong.

While the final game prompts you to continue with a countdown every time you run out of lives but still have credits, it does so very discreetly on the corner of the screen. This graphic was likely meant for when you run out of credits.

Test Menu#

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: Is there any way to access this menu?

The game's main executable contains strings and code for a test menu, either as a debug feature or as remnants of the arcade version's test menu. The buttons are labeled as arcade buttons instead of PlayStation ones, and the textures referenced either are not present or were moved in the final game. Note that the game calls itself Coron internally - the graphics data file is also named CORON.D. While the reason for this change in name in the middle of the development process is unknown, it can be speculated that ASCII, the original publisher of Coron for the PC-88 and other 8-bit computers in 1985, might have retained the rights for the name.

\CD\TES_SO1B.TIM
\CD\TES_SO1A.TIM
\CD\TES_SO0a.TIM
\CD\TES_SO0b.TIM

Coron Version 0.01J
2001.11.16 16:05

Anime=%3d
[%3d] %2d:%2d
[<][>] Select
[Btn1] Start
[Btn2] koma 
[Btn1] Stop 
            
[START] EXIT
 AniTest
 StageSelect
SCREEN000.DAT
cannot create
Stage:%3d 
 Program

Item Labels#

Together with the item sprites are these little bubbles that presumably would pop up on the place of the respective picked up item. Two of the labels, POINT and EXTRA, don't seem to have an associated item.

The palette pictured here might be wrong.

Odd Character#

There are two pictures of this weird hot-blooded-looking little guy. The small one is located with the item sprites, between the speedup and the power boot, which may suggest that he was a bonus powerup of some sort as per the unused labels. The graphics look very unfinished, drawn far cruder than anything else in the game, which may indicate it got scrapped even before the supposed location test. The palette pictured here is likewise ordered between the one used for the speedup and the one for the boot and is otherwise unused, meaning it is probably correct.

Unused Backgrounds#

Miscellaneous backgrounds of unknown use. The first two differ only by a transposed sliver of the graphic that composes the left four fifths of the image. Two of these might be the referenced textures on the test menu, as all of these are composed of two separate textures.

Regional Differences#

Japan	Korea

The title was transliterated into Latin letters, and the palm tree was moved to accommodate the new logo shape, the copyright year was updated from 2002 to 2003 and the reference to the SuperLite 1500 Series was removed. Inexplicably, as with Keeper, the word BUTTON in PRESS START BUTTON was changed to lowercase. Success' website was substituted by Monosoft's, the Korean publisher, who chose a better font than Comic Sans to write it, but did not change the http://www part, a hard to unsee visual mismatch.

References#