I started playing through this game and wanted to see how far it would go, my curiosity leading me to see several weird things never seen otherwise in the Bomberman series (to my knowledge anyway.)

First there's the Balloon enemies. Now this is the only enemy in the game and it starts simple enough; stage 1 has 1, stage 2 has 2 etc. until you reach 4. Then the game just loops 4 enemies forever and nothing ever really changes. The balloons have behavior patterns which is quite weird. They begin happy, just floating around and being nonsensical, when their expression starts to change. The second face appears sometimes and is this simple line face, something like this: ._. and then into a worried face.

Finally they turn red and get this malicious face and will pursue you, being easily exploited in some cases because they want to charge you directly and are easy to trap. Then they reset to happy and it all starts over again.



Bizarre huh? The next big thing is half blocks. So you know the soft blocks that you can destroy right? Well our character here moves in half blocks, meaning every step is about half of a tile and he can lay bombs there too, inbetween two tiles. What happens is it will destroy half of a soft block! Not only that, but it changes the physics too! You cannot pass through a half block (nor the enemies) but a bomb blast can still penetrate the other side! This makes for excellent flanking maneuvers.




Isn't that weird? It'd be impressive to see mechanics like these return, although I'm certain most of this exists due to some weird limitations with the MSX. Next is the auto bomb levels. Every fourth level is an auto bomb level where the player repeatedly drops bombs without control. Basically you just keep moving and try to kill the enemies at the same time. It's a big nuisance and really doesn't add anything to the gameplay. It's similar to the effect the skull item can have on you in some games as well as the bonus stages in Bomberman (NES).



This leads me into game length. I was curious how long this game went on and decided to play to level 50, seeing as how traditional Bomberman games have ended there. Nope! It just keeps going. The stage counter only has two digit places in the corner so I figured I'd push on to 100 to see what would happen. Essentially, the game is endless. At 100 the tens place of the counter becomes part of an item sprite. This sprite represents the item hidden in the level (as well as the fact that you're over 100?) I played to level 102 and then decided to throw in the towel. I may check back on this later and go further.

These are levels 100, 101, and 102 from left to right. Notice how the item is the same as the sprite in the stage counter, what a spoiler!  


Oh, I haven't mentioned the items now have I? This game has a lot of weird stuff in it, from money bags to cocktails and bicycles. Just look at all this junk and try to tell me what it's supposed to be. (Edit: Fixed the cropping.)



It's all here folks. There's literally a can of coke! Every stage has an item in it and let me tell you, bomb one of those items and you get punished so hard.



That also reminds me, you can bomb the exits that appear in the levels too. Yes every level has an exit hidden somewhere and normally in Bomberman games you destroy the enemies and then find the exit? Well look what happens in this game.



All it does is reset the stage you're currently on, potentially losing progress if you've already killed enemies! Why?! I found no use for the exit, other than trying not to touch or bomb it. It's the most useless thing in this entire game, just a big fat hazard! What a waste!

Aside from a few other nuances, there's not a lot to say about the game. It was a fun experiment and interesting to see these weird and different rules/physics compared to the Bomberman games we're so accustomed to. More info will come later as I journey into the MSX, but for now, I'm dead tired!