I was overcome with cravings for something nostalgic the other day. This led me to the original Bomberman on the Nintendo Entertainment System. I became a fan of the franchise later on and only briefly experienced the first one at Church when I was a wee lad. I figured I would bring along a friend and tackle the first adventure because it has been in my collection forever and I haven’t given it proper due. It was disappointing to discover that, despite being a franchise focused around multiplayer, that this first entry is a solo only affair. I didn’t let that harsh my mellow as I dove right in anyway. Unfortunately Bomberman on the NES just isn’t as good as I had hoped. Let’s take a look.
There’s not much story to speak of. You play as a robotic guy named Bomberman who, as you may have already guessed, uses bombs to attack foes. It’s an overhead action game with maze-like stages which are deceptively easy to manage. You guide the little guy around these areas with your goal being to find the exit in fifty different levels. These are hidden in the blocks with brick textures which can be destroyed with the explosion from your bombs. The solid ones are mere obstacles and cannot be blown up. While searching for the hidden doors you have a couple of things working against you. Enemies wander the courses aimlessly, but they can be dispatched with your trademark attack. One touch from them leads you to die and lose a life. You’ve got several different foes with varying speeds and patterns to deal with so you best be prepared.
Generally the cutesy enemies aren’t going to cause you a lot of problems. They’re mindless and they don’t give chase. The real strategy comes in the fact that your explosions are plus shaped, and have a very limited range. They also take a few seconds to explode after being placed. This is good because Bomberman himself can die by his own hand if you aren’t careful. The general strategy here is to either time the placement of your explosions, or to trap an enemy against a block so that they cannot move out of range. This is where the frustration comes in. Even in the later areas I had the darndest time timing my bomb placements just right. Trapping foes with them puts you right into danger, and sometimes I would wind up just trapping myself. When you die Bomberman loses all of his power-ups.
Speaking of power-ups there are a few different items to collect here, and they’re downright necessary to maintain your sanity. These increase your abilities by making Bomberman move faster, increasing the number of bombs you can place at once, and more. The most useful ones let you walk through blocks, and even make you invulnerable to Bomberman’s own explosions. The game is a real slog when you don’t have any of these which is why it’s such a dreadful feeling when you lose all of them. What I really didn’t like about this game however is that there’s a timer constantly counting down in every stage. You don’t automatically lose a life when it runs out. Instead it throws a handful of new enemies into the stage. That wouldn’t be so bad except they’re much faster and therefore significantly more difficult to dispatch. I hate it. I really do.
When you’ve completely maxed out Bomberman’s power-up levels the game becomes tolerable. Getting to that point will really test your patience. Filling the screen with explosions is downright rewarding especially when you can freely walk right through your own firepower. There’s even still a fair amount of strategy here thanks to the plus shape effect, and the fact that you can chain them together by placing bombs within each others range. Unfortunately all fifty levels are shaped identically to each other. They’re the same green and gray with identical block placements. The only differences are the power-ups you can find, and the enemies present. I’m not necessarily against games that feature a singular design. It’s just too repetitive here. The fact that you have to blow up blocks until you find a door is downright tedious. I would have preferred it to be centered around defefating all enemies instead.
Before playing this installment I never realized how much the Bomberman experience relies on its multiplayer. The stages are too large and the gameplay is altogether too lonely. Another big mistake here is how rare the power-ups are. As I mentioned earlier the only way Bomberman is tolerable to play is when you’re maxed out on these items. Not only are they ridiculously rare (odds are you won’t even see one through the first few stages) but specific power-ups aren’t even available until later on. This means you’ll have to play as the same old slow ineffective Bomberman for quite a while even when you’re playing well. Even for a game released in the 80s I’m surprised Hudson Soft let this fly. I can’t imagine the testers had any amount of fun with this title.
Bomberman is also a very ugly game. I hope you like the colors green and gray, because that’s primarily what you’ll see here. There’s absolutely no diversity in scenery. That’s right, it’s fifty stages of the same exact terrain. At least the enemies feature different designs. They’re all very abstract and a bit cutesy which is fine by me. They also have a few different frames which is more than I expected. Bomberman himself looks like trash. He barely animates, and has no black outline. He’s just a few pixels, and honestly his character model looks like something that could have been reproduced on the Atari 2600. It’s no wonder Hudson Soft claimed he’s a robot in this installment because otherwise it would have been anyone’s guess. At least the soundtrack fares better. I found the limited soundtrack to be surprisingly enjoyable and actually recognizable as Bomberman.
