Atomic Punk

The Good
Atomic Punk is a Game Boy exclusive made by Hudson Soft and is the first portable entry in their beloved Bomberman series. There's an Arcade game with the same title, but is a different game and released a little later.

This actually is four games in one. The first game Type "B", is in the "underworld" and Is your classical Bomberman action, is a port of the NES Bomberman, very basic but always fun, you place your well timed bomb and try to blast your way around, find upgrades inside blocks, avoid and kill all the enemies, search for the exit and be aware of your own explosives.

In the second game, type "A" you control Atomic Punk (which is Bomberman's son) and is basically the same but in the outer world "factories", some of these have hazards that add to the gameplay, for example Wyndria Factory has strong changing winds that pushes your character in different directions. Also, instead of finding the upgrades you can buy them from a store, with gold you get as a reward for finishing a level faster; but check this out: you have to unlock these items, and you gonna need them to complete the hardest factories. As you can probably tell all these makes for a very different experience.

The third and fourth type of games are the multiplayers. Very difficult to try these nowadays... but even back then I never knew someone that had the Game Link Cable to connect two Game Boys. But the fact that Hudson programmed these modes is just mind-blowing! This is the first entry in the series to feature a Battle Mode. You can argue that this game created this mode. From other Bomberman games that I've experienced I can tell that these VS modes are some of the most fun you could ever get by playing Bomberman with a friend: you guys make the fun.

The Graphics and the music are serviceable. Nothing fancy but good enough, with a different set of graphics and sound for each mode. for the different modes of playing: Type A or B

It's a long game to beat. In the classic B mode you have 50 stages. The Outer World A mode, has eight different factories, each one with around 9 stages. With even some bonuses here and there. So it offers hours upon hours of challenge and fun. There's a password system, but you only get a password once you lose a life; you get to keep your gold then even for the items that you didn't use and the game remembers the beaten factories (if you happen to do all the stages of a single one)

The Bad
It is quite difficult. Catching some of these enemies is anoying, the turtle like enemies "spids" are designed to run away from your bombs... But eventually you develop strategies, so is not that bad. There's a time limit, and is not at all generous, with less and less time with each passing stage: it becomes very Hard very fast.

The Bottom Line
Atomic Punk is probably some of the best value you can get for your money on the Game Boy, and in fact quite cheap to get (cartridge only). You can pick this game any day and have a little fun with it, save the password, let it rest for years and then give it another go. It's very impressive the amount of content they are giving you specially considering the system. It just speaks wonders about a developer who in those days were at their prime. A fine example of the Hudson Soft golden days.