RetroGaming

I think you meant "Does Bomberman have a lore?"

With a post titled "Bomberman has a lore?", I was expecting the post to be either surprised that Bomberman has a lore, or surprised that someone would have said Bomberman has a lore.

Especially when paired with the picture of a game's boxart, I thought that this post was about something lore-related on the box or in its artwork.

As to where to find the lore, I'd check the manuals, including manuals from other regions. For a lot of the 90s, the manuals were the best (and occasionally only) place to find lore!

As taken from the European manual:

"Far to the north of BomberMan's hometown, Peace Town, lies the modern metropolis Diamond City. There, the evil Carat Diamond and his cohort, scientist Dr. Mook, are holding a Robot Tournament with robots specially designed for their combat and offensive capabilities. Hoping to steal BomberMan's advanced combat capabilities, Diamond has created a fake BomberMan to go to Peace Town and kidnap the real BomberMan. Aware of Diamond's plot, Black Bomberman heads out alone to face the fake BomberMan. But Black BomberMan is defeated and his castle is taken. Somehow Black BomberMan escapes and seeks refuge with White BomberMan, and warns him of Diamond's evil plan. Soon, wave upon wave of enemy robots begin their advance toward Peace Town. Now our two heroes must join forces to overthrow the evil Diamond !!"

- https://bomberman.fandom.com/wiki/Super_Bomberman#Story

Don't know about the old games but Bomberman 64 has a whole ass single player campaign. Can't remember the story. Can't even remember if I managed to beat it. But it was kinda cool.

The year was 1801. Great Britain had just instituted an oppressive colonial government to oppress his people. Bomberman vows to take up arms to overthrow the tyrannical government.

I own the TurboGrafx 16 version, it was one of my favorite games for it. That was my only console as a child, good times. There is a cutscene at the start, and that's all the lore the manual offers too: https://r.mprd.se/TurboGrafx-16/TG16-PCE/EXTRAS/Manuals/Bomberman%20%28U%29.pdf

Something along the lines of a inventor's daughter being kidnapped by an invention gone evil (black Bomberman), and you are the one who didn't go bad, trying to rescue her (which you do by the end).

I don't have the manual anymore, but it's findable online.

This video probably illustrates well what game writing was like back in the day.

There was a spinoff too with a story. 'Atomic Punk'

I think the story reboots every few games, so it's not like say, the Mega Man games where every game is part of one big continuity. There's a setting and recurring characters that's built up over the years and that's about it; everything else is specific to that game or subseries. Basically, the Bombermen (M/F), who may or may not be siblings, are some kind of space police from the planet Bomber and they have to fight a villain, usually but not always Bagura/Buggler, to protect the peace in the galaxy.

There is a bit of a rabbit hole (puddle, really) you can go into where some of the earlier games have a connection to the Lode Runner games, because Hudson Soft did the Famicom port of Lode Runner. What it boils down to is that Lode Runner used to be Bomber Man. This connection hasn't really been relevant for a long time, but the fact that Lode Runner is a Galactic Commando may have influenced the current setting.

It would have to have lore... There was a couple TV series and Bomberman 64 was a traditional platformer with a plot and everything.

I don't know what it aftually is, tho, since I have never seen those shows or played that game. 🤷‍♂️

The SNES Bomberman have a lot of lore IIRC, bad guys from outer space and stuff. You could write some fanfic with that.