Bomberman '93

The Good
You control "Bomberman", and the addictive nature of this game is in the satisfaction of clearing out (very stupid) enemies, and then finding the exit to the next world. The play mechanics being so simple and addictive excuse the fairly poor presentation in this game. Sure, the colours are fine, the sprites fairly lively, but you cannot help but begin to notice that the levels are very repeated, and the fairly uninspired environments. But as I've mentioned, it doesn't really affect your play experience - the focus is on exploding your way through the levels. You are clearing your way through bomb-able bricks as to gain access to various enemies (some ugly, some pretty cute). You can put most of them away with a single blast. It's fun.

Which brings us to the boss fights. After a number (seven, I think), of lead-up stages, we are pitted against various overgrown enemies with much more complicated attack patterns than what the drones throughout the levels have previously used. These are challenging levels, sometimes frustrating, but once the pattern is determined, the bosses are fairly easy to dispose of. They are a nice round-off to each world that Bomberman finds himself in.

The best this game to offer is in it's enemy-blasting and power-up system. Upgrades include increasing your blast-radius to ridiculous degrees, auto-ignite bombs, kicking ability, and a few other special upgrades that are sadly, a little too infrequent in their spawning. Nevertheless, upgrading your man is a fun investment - but it can all come crashing down with one of those classic sudden Bomberman deaths.

The multi-player mode is a great addition too. Going up against human opponents is probably a little more satisfying that exotically drawn drones who simply circle or patrol mindlessly. The neat thing here for me was the ability to mix the Wiimote functionality with the Gamecube controller. Nice flexibility here in these modern times.

The Bad
Of course, modern gamers will see the flaws this game presents quick-smart. The variety in the gameplay (something which good companies think long and hard about today) is virtually non-existent. As mentioned above, the only real break-up the game offers is in it's boss fights - which admittedly are not significant enough to bring refreshment.

Bomberman is arguably a multi-player experience chiefly, but one gripe I had with this mode is that I wish you could round-robin the level you were battling on - you can't. And, the three-to-five battles must take place on a pre-determined level selected pre-game. It seems a bit petty, but you do get sick of re-starting even twice on the one play field, especially when the screen fades to black after each round, as if it were ready to take you onwards to a new area.

The Bottom Line
I downloaded this because I heard that it was the best 16-bit Bomberman available. I don't agree with that, (Bomberman 2 on SNES is a better game), but nevertheless, this is a nice obscure adventure of Bomberman's single endeavour onto the TG16.