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The Bomberman series of
games has been around for a long time, and a version of
Bomberman has been a less than surprising entry in many
platform's catalogues.
It first appeared on the MSX series of 8bit computers in
the early 80s. The original game was a 1 player game
which while entertaining was a poor relation to its
sequels - especially its offspring that featured the
multi-player battle mode.
The game casts the player as a little character into a
2D grid in which walls are made up of soft and hard
blocks. You start with the ability to drop a bomb that
will explode after a few seconds and destroy anything
except hard blocks that is caught in its blast wave
(including yourself). Soft blocks may leave powerups
behind- the standard ones being bomb blast range
increase and multi-bomb drop ability - but there are
many, many others allowing the player to kick bombs,
throw them over walls etc - allowing for players to
create a number of different strategies. In single
player mode, the idea is to kill all the enemies in each
level that move around to set patterns and paths in the
levels.
Bomberman has really always been about the multi-player
mode though - the single player mode has always been
there, and in many cases beefed-up to a 2 player co-op
mode, but the battle mode is the star of the show. A
number of players are placed into the arena and its a
case of last man standing.
My first real experience of the battle mode was via the
still quite brilliant Super Bomberman on the SNES. This
version of the game ,with a multitap allowing 4 player
battle modes, sent the playability through the roof.
Game magazines are sprinkled with stories of how this
game became extended lunchtime fodder in game
development houses (apparantly the N64 Goldeneye team
almost fell out with each other on occasions over this).
Its addictive "one-more-game" quality is still there and
there is no such thing as having one round of this with
3 other combatants.
Along comes the Saturn version of this game, and quite
frankly, it is still in my opinion the best version
available today - and there are a number of reasons for
this.
I'll get the main and most obvious reason out of the way
first. The multi-player battle mode is stupendous - it
supports up to 8 players across 7 different special
battle arenas, and there is a special wide arena that
supports up to 10 players. Getting a full-on session of
this would require a wallet-busting 2 multi-taps, a
batch of controllers ,and loads of food and drink to
feed your friends while they play this. The smaller
scaled graphics on the wide 10 player arena will require
a bigger screen too.
Even without the full compliment of players though (I've
had 4-6 player sessions) the game is still a riot. What
is also great is that practically everything is
configurable - from the basic stuff like number of
rounds for victory, through to stuff like random start
positions, sudden-death on/off and a selectable bonus
game for each round winner giving the chance to start
the next round with a power-up.
You can set up teams and series of games which are saved
to backup memory between sessions. You can also decide
how many computer components you want to battle against,
each with a selectable level of AI.
The options go on and on. It is quite simply the
definitive version to play. The only niggle I have is
that the dinosaurs your character can find and ride on
that appeared in Super Bomberman 3 feature in the game
and you can't disable this - but that is a minor thing
that might only annoy purists.
The standard 1 or 2 player coop game is here too - but
it's on a grand scale. The graphics in the battle mode
are a tad on the functional side, but this mode features
beautifully detailed graphics which are more or less the
pinnacle of 2D sprite work. You can save your progress
in this mode too and its pretty entertaining as the
levels are cleverly designed and have lots of little
touches and quirks - a labour of love. The music in this
mode is a step up from the plinky plonks of the battle
mode.
However that is not all. Saturn Bomberman features a new
mode - called Master Mode. This is a special one player
challenge mode whereby you must navigate a set of
specially designed levels - the layout of which almost
makes it feel like a puzzle game. Like the standard
game, it is beautifully presented and has great music
too. Bomberman isn't known for great music - the battle
mode features the usual fare - but this mode and the
standard game have had some effort expended on them in
this department and it shows.
Each level has its own best score saved and stokes up
the replayability. When a game of this mode ends, you
may get the chance to save your score in a high score
table and you also receive a ranking for your efforts.
Not only is this game the best version of Bomberman
available (and I have sampled the excellent Gamecube and
PS2 versions of Bomberman) , I would go as far to say
that its damn close to being the best game on the Saturn
- it is without peer on the Saturn in the multi-player
genre at least. As a single screen multi-player game
this is as good as it gets on any platform.
Even the XBox360 version of this doesn't one-up the
Saturn as it supports a max of 8 players on-line - OK -
it is easier to get 8 opponents on-line, but the same
room experience is better. I'm not convinced that the
forced perspective more modern versions of the game have
used is a good idea either.
If you have a Saturn and access to a multi-tap and extra
people to play with then get this game - it is as simple
as that. You owe it to yourself.
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