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Bomberman Game Review

Bomberman is a 1990 maze video game developed and published by Hudson Soft for the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16. It’s a pretty solid, though flawed early game in the series.

Released five years after the NES original, this game was and still is pretty well regarded among critics and fans. While I find it to be too surface-level and simplistic, I respected it for what it is, which is a fun early Bomberman game that is diverting and charming enough to experience.

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I have to say that I did not play the multiplayer mode as there are no computer opponents, only human ones, which was a frustrating decision that was a serious issue that prevented me from enjoying it more. Thus, what I was left with was a seriously short single player campaign and that was pretty much it.

Let’s talk about that campaign. There are eight levels here, each consisting of eight stages, making for the total of 64 stages. This stage count was too low for me personally, but the game is still quite enjoyable as I am a fan of the series and this one offers that fun Bomberman loop that I always love. You have to defeat all enemies and uncover a hidden exit inside one destroyable block. The power-ups are limited here, but the number of bombs and the range of explosions can be increased, which is always crucial. And of course the timing of the detonations is the most valuable power-up that made the game much easier than it otherwise would have been.

Every level ends with a boss fight in the eighth stage. This addition was the main distinction between this game and the NES counterparts. The bosses are on the easier side of things, but I really enjoyed them nonetheless. They were solidly designed and the highlights were those snakelike bosses where you have to kill off certain segments in progression to then finish them off entirely. These were so much fun.

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The enemies are rather forgettable, making for a repetitious gameplay experience. Those that could pass through blocks obviously were the only truly dangerous foes while all the others can easily be defeated. The stages are not easily distinguishable from each other besides the changed block patterns, but each world is visually somewhat different, though not by a lot.

This Bomberman benefits from an improved hardware that it plays on. The NES game was quite dated in its look, but this one benefits from the PC Engine graphical power that led to more colors and more polish. Bombermen themselves are better animated, fire looked more convincing and the palette is much more colorful.

The sound is strong too and the soundtrack is pretty excellent. It is repetitive for sure, but the main theme was superb and a couple of tunes here were delightfully catchy. The game’s plot is standard, but the inclusion of Black Bomberman as a villain was interesting for sure. I just wished that the game was lengthier and more complex.

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