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Bomberman Game Review

Bomberman is a 1983 arcade-style maze video game developed by Hudson Soft for various platforms. It’s the game that started the entire franchise that’s still running to this day.

As franchise starters go, Bomberman is pretty solid, though far from great. Obviously, the game came out in the first half of the eighties decade, so it needs to be cut some slack, but still the franchise would significantly improve in the next decade. The simplicity of this entry is problematic, but expected. But the formula was set here and it would remain pretty much the same throughout decades, so the creators made something truly timeless here and they need to be congratulated for that.

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First and foremost, I’ve just learned about the plot while reading upon this game after completing it and I have to say that it’s incredibly dark. The fact that this cutesy game has such a sinister premise behind it is fascinating to me and quite surprising.

The gameplay is iconic by now. You control a robot who has to find a way to exit the maze through the door, but that door is only unlocked after you kill all of the stage’s enemies. The decision to have these doors also hide behind the blocks that you have to destroy with bombs was crucial in making the game longer than it would have been otherwise.

There are power-ups in this entry, but not all that many unfortunately. You can get more bombs and you can extend the fire’s range, both staples of the entire franchise. Of the other power-ups, clearly the best one has to be the one that gives you the option to detonate bombs whenever you wish by the click of a button. When you get this weapon, you are basically indestructible and the game is over, at least that was the case for me as I blasted through the rest of the stages afterward with ease.

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The enemy A.I. is unfortunately inferior to the one present in most future games in the series. While the coin-like creature that moves incredibly fast can be dangerous and that one enemy that is straight-up pursuing you is also terrific, most of the other enemies either just stand there waiting for you to kill them or they follow a very limited moving pattern that leaves them quite vulnerable.

Bomberman was released on the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985 and that is the version that I played and finished. There are only fifty stages in this game and each is set in the same Solitaire-like green maze with white blocks, leaving very little room for variety. This made the game both too short and somewhat repetitive.

Graphically speaking, it’s nothing amazing or anything, but it actually does the job done and is quite solid for its time. The final Lode Runner reference was fascinating and Bomberman’s soundtrack is truly terrific with the mid-level sound cue becoming the staple of each entry further down the line.

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