Executive summary

Bomberman is Hudson Soft's creation, made famous on Nintendo's machines and owned by Konami. Hudson put Bomber Man on Japanese home computers in 1983 — a bomb that explodes "in a plus-shaped pattern" among blocks that break — and its Famicom version of December 20, 1985 made the game a hit; Hudson's own U.S. registration claims first use on February 5, 1989, when the NES release reached America. The series ran on every Nintendo generation from the Famicom to the Switch, on NEC's PC Engine, whose chips Hudson designed, and on Sega's Saturn, where ten players could fight at once; Nintendo published some western releases and never owned the character, and its own pages now credit Konami. Konami took Hudson in stages — an affiliate in August 2001, a majority in April 2005, whole on April 1, 2011 — and absorbed it into Konami Digital Entertainment on March 1, 2012; Konami dates the series to 1983 and marked its fortieth year in 2023.

The slot is Konami Gaming's: one cabinet, two titles, one Grand. BOMBERMAN BLAST and BOMBERMAN BOOM were shown on the new Solstice 49C at G2E on October 7, 2025, as "the first-ever slot games based on BOMBERMAN"; Graton SIS 26-BM · Bomberman Resort & Casino held the launch party on December 5 and called it the world premiere, though a floor video from the Palms in Las Vegas is dated November 24 (E2). Florida's first placement followed at Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood in January 2026 and Atlantic City's at Ocean by April; Konami's results say the series "continued to outperform the casino floor average in the North American market," and an Eilers-Fantini report ranks it among the Top 25 Indexing New Games – Core.

The maker prints the features, not the mathematics. Konami's brochure describes every feature and lists the denominations; its help screens and compliance files sit behind a customer login. The one published specification block is the trade press's: five reels on 20 or 40 lines, denominations from a penny to 50 cents, maximum bets of 400 or 800, a hit frequency of 29.5%, a return range of 88.07% to 96.08% and a Grand that resets at $10,000.11 Every setting in that range clears Nevada's 75% floor, New Jersey's 83% and the 85% average that Florida's Seminole compact sets, and the 8.01 points between the lowest and highest settings live in reels no source publishes.

Four of the five jackpots are fixed multiples of the bet; the Grand is a meter. The maker's own screen images and players' published thumbnails show the Mega, Major, Minor and Mini at 125, 62.5, 12.5 and 7.5 times the total bet at every bet read — $100, $50, $10 and $6 at the $0.80 minimum, $1,000, $500, $100 and $60 at $8.00 — while the Grand is a progressive the two titles "can combine under the same 1-level link," read between $10,008.47 and $50,697.18 on the screens seen. No New Jersey list of jackpots above $40,000 names the game through September 12, 2026.

The three bombs are the game's display of progress, and its printed rule counts one spin at a time. Konami calls them "Three metamorphic Bombs," the trade press "three main collection pots"; the screen says any one or two bomb symbols "MAY AWARD" their feature and three "ALWAYS AWARD" it, and the brochure puts the guarantee at three "collected in a spin." No public text ties the bombs' appearance between spins to a count, a bound or a changed chance, and no practitioner guide to the game was found; on the published record the bombs' class is undetermined, and the only rule printed gives them nothing to store (Appendix C). The word itself cuts both ways: Australia's standard uses "metamorphic" for true accumulation and "pseudo-metamorphic" for a changing look "while having no association to when a feature will actually occur."

The name reached gaming machines before the maker's claim allows. Sammy's pachislot Bomberman Victory, made under a Hudson Soft license, entered Japanese halls in April 2006, and Konami's own pachislot of the spin-off Bombergirl in September 2022, so "the first-ever slot games based on BOMBERMAN" is true of casino games only (E1). Online, the maker announced BOMBERMAN BLAST for its new Konami Online Interactive division in October 2025; its release of June 9, 2026 still listed the game as "more to come," and its online list of September 2026 does not carry it.

What the volume covers

Section 1 is the orientation: one owner of the character, one maker, one cabinet, two titles and one linked jackpot, and where each is documented. In this volume Bomberman, alone, is the character and the video-game series; the game or the family is BOMBERMAN BLAST and BOMBERMAN BOOM together; a bomb symbol is one of the three colored trigger symbols on the reels, and the bombs are the three displays above them; the Bomber Game is the hold-and-spin; and credits are counted at a penny, 80 to the minimum bet. Section 2 is the history the slot draws on — Hudson Soft, the Nintendo and NEC years, Konami's purchase — with the dated record, the marks and the patents; Section 3 is the cabinet. Section 4 is the mechanical core — the grid, the bet, the bombs, the Bomber Game, the egg pick and the free games. Section 5 is the mathematics: what is published, the return range, the jackpot multiples, the pick's arithmetic and a register of the bad figures. Section 6 is the census. Sections 7 through 10 cover jackpots, bets, the market and the channels. Appendix A grades the sources, Appendix B shows every calculation, and Appendix C answers the persistent-state question.

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Independent research by Lost Cabin Consulting LLC, not published, endorsed or reviewed by any game maker; game names belong to their owners. Gambling carries real risk of loss, and nothing here promises a win. Play only where it is legal and you are of age. If gambling stops being fun, call 1-800-GAMBLER. See the disclaimer.

Practice the table games free in the casino simulators, or see every volume.