BlitzBombers

In the late nineties, when the devil and his aunt was making a Dynablaster clone, you had to make it really special to stand out. A British team certainly did it, and the game is one testament to the power of Blitz Basic (developed by Acid Software).

As in all Bomberman-type games, you and a number of other players are put in a maze, where you must blow away bits of the maze with bombs in order to reveal power-ups and make a path towards your enemies which you must blow up. BlitzBombers has its fair share of power-ups, ranging from the ubiquitous extra bombing range and extra bombs bonuses to light bulbs which either obscure the playfield or make it so bright that you cannot navigate. Another powerup grants you real invisibility, so that you may sneak up on your friends. Even more useful is the invincibility item.

A particular power-up allows you to play a sub-game, of which there are four:

• PakAttack: The player who picks up the sub-game power-up is Pac-man, and the others are ghosts for him to eat up. The usual yellow dots and power-pills are of course also there.
• BombShoot: You must shoot all bombs except for your own.
• ShieldSearch: A golden shield is hidden on the level, the finder wins.
• Tag: One player is "it", and must pass "it" on to another player before the time runs out.

The winner of a sub-game gets to inflict a power-up of his choice on his adversaries.

Unlike many other PD Dynablaster games, BlitzBombers has both a working one-player (adventure) mode with over a hundred levels, as well as the usual multi-player game, played either for a set number of matches (grudge match) or until everyone simply gets tired. It also has a working AI, so that computer players may fill empty chairs.

While most of the game is played in lo-res (320x256), the game can switch to hi-res (640x256) mode, so as to fit in more on-screen. This becomes necessary when the number of players rises above four, which is a possibility since this game supports not only the usual four-player adaptor supplied with Dynablaster, but also null-modem hook-up, so that up to eight players can participate at once.