"The explosions! They're everywhere!"

Bomberman Land Touch! is, as you may have guessed, a Bomberman game for the DS. Unlike the phail worthy attempt to make Bomberman a more "mature" game on the Xbox 360, Bomberman Land Touch! instead stays true the style of the old games, adds some new DS mini games, and, of course, continues to do what Bomberman does best. Blow stuff up, a lot. And that's always good fun.

There are two main modes in Bomberman Land Touch!. The first mode is the mini game oriented story mode. The story mode doesn't really have much story to it. Cheerful White, the White Bomberman, is invited by his other coloured Bomberman friends to the Bomber Pirate Island, a theme park, to have some fun, and Cheerful White wants to become the "Pirate King" of Bomber Pirate Island. The story isn't winning any awards, but it works well as a set up for the mini game oriented play of the story mode.

Progressing through the story requires you to play through mini games, of which there are 36 across the island. Outside of mini games, you'll view the island from an isometric perspective. You'll move around the island with the stylus, by simply pointing where you want to go. In fact, you're not even going to touch the buttons throughout the story mode. There are various booths around the island, which is where you'll head to play one of the various mini games.

The mini games have a good amount of variety, and can be pretty entertaining overall. The mini games range from things like slide your stylus back and forth to run faster, to blowing through the mic to put out bombs before they explode. Once you complete a mini game, you get a card. You'll need to gather cards throughout the game to go through gates around the park, allowing you to access areas of the park and therefore new mini games. When you complete mini games in the story mode, you can then play them in the Attractions Mode. This mode is basically playing the mini games for fun to get high scores. The real enjoyment you'll get out of this mode, however, is playing with others. Through single-card download play, you can play these mini games with your friends, competing to get the highest score. One problem, though, is that every time you want to play a new mini game, you'll have to go through the download process again, which makes it quite annoying and tedious to switch games, and you may not be motivated to do so.

However, the mini games are merely an admittedly fun distraction compared to the Battle Pack. Battle Pack is Bomberman, real Bomberman. It's pretty much the same as Bomberman DS, which is not at all a bad thing. It's the same frantic, explosive fun you'd expect from a Bomberman game. There's a large selection of levels and modes to be found. Some of the modes range from a classic battle mode, to racing to get a crown, to bombing as much of the level as you can. There are also team matches, time limits, and handicaps that you can set as well, along with setting the number of computer players.

Compared to the story, the entire Battle Pack is controlled entirely by the buttons. They won't even let you use the stylus. Thanks to the DS' two screens, levels are larger, and allow for the maximum of eight players to play without things getting too hectic. Of course, if you feel like squeezing eight players in to one screen, the map is there for you to do so. You'll move with the D-Pad, and use the buttons to drop bombs. Bombs explode, and you use these explosions, of course, to destroy soft blocks and defeat your opponent. You'll also find power ups, which will let you drop more bombs, make your explosions bigger, make you run faster, and more. Unfortunately, some items don't make an appearance, especially since many of the missing ones did appear in Bomberman DS. You won't get the glove, and there are no other bomb types, like the awesome detonator bomb, apart from the standard one.

But, the main attraction is multiplayer of course. With only one copy of the game, up to eight players can download the game from you, and you can play. The best part of it is, you'll have access to every option you get while playing the battle mode alone. If you don't have eight friends, you add computer players to the match, or if you really feel like it, go for a one on one duel. Again, you can also play team matches in multiplayer, which is awesome if you have eight people to play with.

There is also Wi-Fi play. Yes, Bomberman Land Touch! utilizes the Nintendo Wi-Fi connection. You can have a match with up to four players online, while the levels etc. are picked a la Mario Kart by a voting system. Unfortunately, the online play can suffer from some lag, more so than games like Mario Kart or Metroid Prime Hunters, especially if you wind up facing somebody in Japan or something, and the game isn't as popular as them either, so you may be hard pressed to find a match online.

The game looks and sounds good, and remains true to the classic Bomberman games. While nothing in the game is pushing hardware, the graphics are bright and colourful, and everything is quite easy on the eyes. The can be some slight lag when you have a billion explosions going on at once, but it's nothing that'll really distract you are detract from the experience. The audio is full of fun, cheery tunes, and fast paced songs that play during battles. It's nothing special, but it gets the job done. It won't annoy you, but it won't really impress you either. The sound effects are also good. Explosions sound like explosions, and there are a bunch of other little sound effects. The voice clips are gone from Bomberman DS, which could be a plus or minus for some, depending on if they annoyed you, or if you liked them.

Pros
+Fun story mode
+Pretty good mini games
+Lots of customization in Battle Pack
+Up to 8 players in single-card download play
+Up to 4 players online
+Explosions. Lots of them.

Cons
-Some mini games aren't as good
-Online play can suffer from lag
-May not find too many games online
-Lack of items from previous Bomberman games

Overall - 8.5

Bomberman Land Touch! is a great party game for the DS. A collection of pretty good mini games, the classic Bomberman battles, and multiplayer modes to accompany both make this a great choice for some multiplayer action, and is probably one of the better multiplayer games on the DS. The lack of items from previous Bomberman games is unfortunate though, as the addition of things like the glove and detonator bombs definitely would have made things a lot more fun. If you don't care for the mini games, I'd still say go with Bomberman DS, as you're not too likely to find somebody to face online, and lag isn't going to help, and Bomberman DS does have many of the items this Bomberman lacks. However, both are great games, and are definitely games to consider if you want a good, fun, crazy multiplayer game for the DS, and will definitely last you a long time thanks to some fun, addictive gameplay.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/05/07

Game Release: Bomberman Land Touch! (US, 11/07/06)