Bomberman

The Good
When I first got a Pc back in 1992, one of the games that I had was Dyna Blaster. it is the same game as Bomberman but with a different title. It had one of the storylines that were not complicated to follow. You see, Black Bomberman decides to emerge from his castle and steal the professor's girlfriend from his lab, and it is up to White Bomberman to rescue her. There are eight rounds in the game, consisting of eight levels each, and to get through each level, you must lay a bomb or a series of bombs to destroy the enemies in the level. But enemies are not the only things that you can bomb. You see, you can also use those bombs to destroy blocks, which is necessary to finding the exit door after you are done with the enemies. Once you have gotten through all eight levels, you proceed to the next round, and at the end of each, you will have to defeat a boss which will take a bit of a pounding.

Power-ups can also be collected when you have destroyed all enemies, and include extra lives, more bombs, wider explosions, and manual detonation. An extra power-up allows you to have the ability of walking through bombs or walls. I don't think that there is a limit on the number of bombs that you carry, so the more you get, the better. With the manual detonation, you do not have to wait at least five seconds for the bomb to detonate. You can blow it up immediately, not giving enemies the chance to escape if they happen to be near it when it goes off. My strategy is to lay out the bombs in different places, especially near enemies, and hope that you can blow something up.

In some of the early rounds in each area, everything is laid out on one screen and you can immediately see the enemies that you have to blow up. Later ones, however, require you to scroll either horizontally or vertically to see the rest of the enemies. Speaking of which, some enemies are smarter than others. At least four of the enemies can walk through the blocks, making it difficult for you to blow them up unless you have manual detonation.

The graphics are very good, especially the ones that are used in rounds three and six. The animations of both Bomberman and the enemies moving are well done, especially the animations of the characters dying. There is a huge selection of music in the game, and they are easy to remember off by heart. All the sound effects are mostly Bomberman walking, an explosion, and the damage being done to a boss, as well as deaths, but the sound that I think that stands out is when Bomberman walks through water in round three.

The Bad
You will not get very far without manual detonation, since you have to wait until the bomb explodes itself, meaning that enemies could have the chance to escape. There is one more power-up that you can get, and looks like a vest. I thought that this makes you invincible, but it turns out that it is useless.

The Bottom Line
While you are busy bombing the place, you have a time limit. If it expires, more enemies will warp into the level. If you manage to reveal an exit, but set a bomb to explode near it, enemies will also appear, which you will have to destroy before the exit becomes accessible again. Bomberman was so popular for its time, that several sequels were made for different systems, and some of the sequels are excellent.

Rating: ****