This Week in Retro: Suzuki Bakuhatsu [2000] (Patreon)

July 6, 2000: Enix welcomes us to the new millennium with a bang

by Diamond Feit

When we laud the video games of the 1990s, we don't talk enough about the creative freedom that came about due to the birth of the CD-ROM format. Once publishers were liberated from Nintendo's requirements that they buy their cartridges directly from the Kyoto superpower, they flocked to the Sony PlayStation (and the PC Engine and the Saturn... but especially the PlayStation), and no idea was too far-fetched. Anthropomorphic domino adventure? Approved. Rapping dog love story? Approved. First-person pinball nightmare? Approved!

It was in this anything-goes atmosphere that, 20 years ago this week, Enix (the Dragon Quest people) delivered unto Japanese PlayStation owners Suzuki Bakuhatsu, a slice-of-life/bomb-defusal adventure game. "Suzuki" is the name of the protagonist as portrayed by model Rin Ozawa, and bakuhatsu is the Japanese word for "explosion." If you'll permit me to play armchair localizer, I would have retitled this game in English as Suzuki Kaboom, Suzuki Da Bomb, or What's Exploding Now in case automobile maker Suzuki was feeling litigious.

Suzuki Bakuhatsu puts the player into Suzuki's shoes—or rather her pajamas, as the game begins with her lying in bed at home. There's a delivery at the door. It is an orange. At least, it looks like an orange, but Suzuki senses something is wrong. Her hunch is right: It is a bomb, and she (i.e. the player) must defuse it before it goes off!

Each bomb disposal segment unfolds like a puzzle game, with the current bomb rendered fully in 3D. By rotating it, examining it for clues (many bombs contain tiny text messages), and unscrewing its various components, Suzuki will uncover the heart of the explosive. In classic action-movie style, the core always features a red LED countdown on its face and two wires, red and blue. Cutting the correct wire will defuse the bomb, while cutting the wrong wire will trigger the explosion and force the player to start over—the stage, that is, not the game... but more on that later.

The bomb-defusing scenes play out in polygons, but the rest of the game is presented almost entirely via still photos arranged slideshow-style. Ozawa is a pro; her expressions and body language sell the events better than any canned cutscene of the era ever could (she talks sometimes, but not as much as one might expect given the CD-quality audio). According to Japanese Wikipedia, popular TV comedian Koji Kato became so enamored with Ozawa after playing this game that they started dating, married within a year, and remain together to this day.

Suzuki Bakuhatsu is not a long game—speedruns clock in at well under an hour—but there's plenty of variation in the above-outlined formula to keep things fresh. The game does not unfold in a linear fashion; after each bomb is defused, the player selects the next chapter by adjusting the clock forwards or backwards. All of Suzuki Bakuhatsu takes place over the course of a single day, and the variable nature of the scenarios means each is independent of the others. Most play out as non-sequiturs to great humorous effect: One moment, Suzuki is home and says, "I'm thirsty," only to jump on a plane and fly somewhere tropical... leading her to discover her iced coffee is another bomb.

Did I mention that Suzuki is neither a police officer nor anyone who would traditionally be called upon to perform this task? The bombs are just coming to her, all the time, in all shapes and sizes. I don't want to spoil them, as finding each bomb is part of the fun, but the game learns hard into absurdity, which makes it perfect for modern streamers (such as Retro Pals, who have played this game on their channel).

Suzuki Bakuhatsu offers three difficulty selections, unlimited continues, and very little randomness, so it's an easy game to stumble through and enjoy with one strange exception: The save system. Periodically, Suzuki will ask, "Aren't you going to save?" as a road sign moves towards the player. Only by pushing in the correct direction (which can vary!) will the player be allowed to save the game. That's right: Saving the game in Suzuki Bakuhatsu is a quick-time-event. That's the worst idea I've ever heard.

Given its bizarre premise and even-stranger execution, it would be easy to assume Suzuki Bakuhatsu was one of those PlayStation games that came from an outsider studio or a one-off experimental developer. In fact it was directed by industry veteran Kouichi Yotsui who created Strider (the arcade version) for Capcom. At BitSummit in 2017, Yotsui and Suzuki Bakuhatsu producer Takehiro Ando told the assembled crowd that they had high hopes for the game in 2000.

"It was an era where Sony Computer Entertainment actively sought to expand the core gaming audience, such that games would become pop culture just like movies and music," Ando said, adding that he "honestly looked to sell a million copies" of Suzuki Bakuhatsu (they did not). On the game's unusual qualities, Kotsui put it bluntly: "Making a game using systems which are already set is boring." He also admitted to being the one who incorporated video-game-ness into the act of saving the game, so we know who to blame for that little piece of frustration.

Enix never released Suzuki Bakuhatsu outside of Japan; it was the company's second-worst-selling game on the PlayStation, and all the embedded text inside the puzzles would have made localization a nightmare. These days, it is best remembered by YouTubers or listicle writers who focus on "weird games you never played", which is a likely truth for most of their audience, but it still feels reductive. Suzuki Bakuhatsu is genuinely funny, the puzzles are challenging, and by focusing on an ordinary woman as a protagonist, the game has an emotional center that few others pull off. It is "weird", yes, but it's also highly innovative and well-executed. The PlayStation was overrun with "unique" titles that were also just poor. Suzuki Bakuhatsu is not one of them.

As always, I'd like to thank all of you for reading my latest column, but as befitting this week's subject...this column is actually a bomb! Which wire will you cut?

RED BLUE