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Bomberman II Game Review

Bomberman II is a 1991 maze video game developed and published by Hudson Soft for the NES. It’s a rather forgettable sequel.

This game is a sequel to the original NES game that was released many years before, making this return quite a prolonged one. It was solidly received, but is nowadays not as well remembered and for many great reasons. It’s one of the more forgettable entries in the entire series.

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The plot is pretty solid with Black Bomberman being the villain once again, but it ended in an anticlimactic way, and it’ a shame that not more of those cutscenes were included. The gameplay loop is pretty much the same here. You destroy blocks, uncovering power-ups and a secret exit door for the next level. The power-ups are way too sparse here, only one per level. They are also quite basic with the usual radius increasers and more bombs being present. The best one is always the timed detonator, which I once again abused like crazy.

There is a multiplayer mode here, but with no computer opponents unfortunately. The single player campaign is way too short for my taste. The game only has 6 areas to offer, each containing 8 levels, counting 64 levels in total. This was just such a low number that led to an overly fleeting gaming experience.

The difficulty level is too low. The enemies are standard with only those that could pass walls posing any threat whatsoever. Others are quite easy to beat. The levels lacked variety in design and/or visual palette. Most are too similar to each other with just the colors changed.

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But at least the main guy and the enemies were solidly animated, copying the designs from the 1990 Bomberman game quite successfully. But the game is otherwise inferior to that entry that had bosses while this one has no boss battles to speak of, rendering the experience monotonous and dull. Bomberman II has a solid score and fine sound effects. It is certainly fun to play for a while as most of these games are, but its short length really affected it negatively.

Bomberman II is one of the lesser entries in this particular franchise. While it looks and sounds solid and is reasonably diverting to play, it’s also an overly fleeting experience with just 64 levels in total. There are sadly no bosses here and the enemies are too easy and standard. The difficulty spike is quite low. Overall, this sequel did not improve much from the original that was released in the previous decade and that was its biggest failing.

My Rating – 3.5