Baku Bomberman [Model NUS-NBMJ-JPN]

爆 Bomberman © 1997 Hudson Soft.
(Baku Bomberman)

The inhabitants of Bomber World have a unique philosophy of life: if something gets in the way, blow it up. Now you, too, can join in the fun with Hudson Soft's Baku Bomberman.

In Baku Bomberman's all-new one-player Adventure mode, marauders have set their sights on Bomberman's peaceful planet. You'll explore labyrinthine levels by dropping bombs, solving puzzles and finding hidden items. The action takes place across five brightly colored worlds: a smoldering volcano, ruined castle, icy mountain range, orbiting space station and storybook village. Find all 100 Gold Cards in the first five worlds and you can access a sixth world.

To maximize your score, you'll need to finish each of the 20 levels as quickly as possible. Deadlines are tighter on the Hard difficulty setting. Despite the prevalence of incendiary devices, Baku Bomberman's overhead perspective, cartoon-like graphics and bright palette gives the game the cheerful feel of Super Mario RPG.

It's Baku Bomberman's multiplayer mode, though, that really blows the socks off the pyrotechnicians at Power Source. In Single Battle mode, dashing about the baffling arenas and blowing each other to smithereens proves to be, well, a blast. Team Battle mode is a highly explosive version of capture-the-flag. Your goal here is to destroy the enemy team's gems while protecting your own.

You can choose the number and duration of battles. You can also choose from three levels of artificial intelligence for CPU-controlled bombers. When the Ghost option is selected, your little guy will return as a wispy double of his old self after he's gone boom. Ghosts can control a normal Bomberman, but they cannot deploy bombs.

You'll savor Baku Bomberman's sneaky new features, including extremely high explosives and the ability to toss or kick your bombs diagonally. Other new features include the ability to pump up bombs, knock foes unconscious, grab and toss unconscious foes, and toss or kick bombs diagonally. Baku Bomberman is a blast!