"It`s a dud."

Bomberman is one of the most classical video game series of all time, developed by Hudson Soft this game was a huge success long time ago and while the following sequels weren`t that lucky, it is hard to find someone out there who haven`t heard of it. I have never been a big fan of Bomberman, but maybe that is because I have never been able to play any other Bomberman aside from this one, some of the later versions look very interesting and fun.

As the title suggests, the game involves blowing up stuff, in this case we have to blow up lots of slimes and other weird things, all of them with incredibly silly faces. The stages are semi-labyrinths made of grey bricks which you can and must destroy to make your way through 50 evil maps.

Not surprisingly, all of the stages look exactly the same only that the number of enemies and their speed increases, as well as the quantity of grey bricks we have to deal with. There are items we can use though, some of them allow us to set more bombs at the same time, or increase the range of our bombs, invincibility, etc.

There is no need to say the game becomes monotonous as hell rather quick, but it is a monotony that could have been easily overlooked were it not for one problem, the fact that we only have 200 seconds to clear each stage. But that is not all, after destroying all the enemies we have to look for an exit, which is hidden behind (or inside) those grey bricks. If you haven`t found it while dealing with the enemies chances are that you won`t have enough time to clear the stage.

There is also a multiplayer player mode, but instead of a cool cooperative two player option here each player must play its own game, once the first one dies it is the second`s turn and so on. Sometimes this is interesting, it is possible to have fun with a friend competing to see who clears more stages first, but I think a typical cooperative mode or even better, both options would have been much better.

In terms of graphics there is nothing much to see, lots of grey bricks over a green background and a main character that looks like a cheap astronaut. We get to see those slime-balloons faces after exploding though, they open their eyes and mouth in a very amusing way, but that`s about it. The music is very elevator-like (as you would expect in a game this old) but for some odd reason not too bad.

So, Bomberman is your typical 80`s video game, it starts with an original idea that repeats and repeats and repeats an uncountable number of times until some stupid and incredibly irritating small flaw that no one in their right mind would ever dare to include delivers the final blow and ruins the whole thing. Oh well.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 12/06/05