BomberMan

I think it only fair to warn you that I have avoided reviewing this game for over 6 months on purpose. I acquired this game and a score of others from a friend I met at school a year ago. BomberMan, as I knew, was a relatively unknown NES Classic. In other words, Hudson's 1987 masterpiece achieved substantial fame within hardcore NES groups, but few members of the mainstream gameplaying community possessed knowledge of the game or the game itself. A year ago, I couldn't remember anything about BomberMan. I pluged the cart into my faithful vertical toaster and enjoyed a corny arranged piece of music from the days of Balloon Fight, Kung Fu, and Duck Hunt, the so-called "Series" or "Pixel-Cover" games. PLOT: BomberMan is a robot who manufactures bombs in a underground complex. One day he hears a rumor and any robot that leaves the complex and reaches the surface will become human. I'd like to add that I adapted this from the instruction booklet, because the game itself, of course, mader no reference to any plot. However, I don't have a problem with BomberMan trying to become human (although we now just witnessed the 90000th time the "I want to be human" sci-fi cliché pop up) and I don't understand why BomberMan blows up vapid enemies. Then again, maybe I should just enjoy the plotless and senseless game style of the early 80's, but this is late 80's.

I did not evaluate BomberMan fairly at first. I didn't time the bombs correctly and I ran out of time. Second time: I blew up all the enemies, but then I couldn't find the exit, ran out of time and died. Frustrating. I ignored BomberMan until 8/10/2000 and replayed it, but this time for more than 5 minutes. After I learned how to "feel" when to place the bombs so they would explode and kill the enemies, which look too akin to balloons with eyes. I still, however, do not enjoy finding the exits, which consists of moving around BomberMan blowing up random blocks in a level hoping to destroy the one blocking the exit. If you fail to destroy the enemies quickly, not enough time will remain for you to locate the exit. Occasionally, massive horders of monsters will emerge from the exit and quickly kill our hero- a fairly large annoyance. My other complaint: Neither the instructions nor the game state exactly how many levels this game has, so it's possible the game repeats forever, no ending. Actually, it doesn't, the game has fifty levels, but I thought I'd scare you. Oddly enough, BomberMan contains a password feature, but the codes are insanely long and the letters repeats in very long strings. One example would be something like, "LLLLLLKIJJJJJJJJ3453333332." Argh.

Graphics C- (and I'm being nice here because even for 1987 they look dated. Small characters, no resoultion)

Sound/Music D+ (Two songs. Title screen and boring elevator BGM)

Challenge A+ (Each levels gets harder than the last until you commit suicide, from what I can tell)

Play Control C (Pretty good, but BomberMan advances and turns around slowly. Sometimes advances a square more than you wanted him to)

Fun Factor A-

Replay Value A

Overall B+ links