Rating: 4.2/5
Hudsonsoft (the company behind Mario Party) released Super Bomberman 5 in Japan back in 1997. The game was a culmination of all the tricks they learned in the previous Bomberman titles since the first one was released back on NES. Featuring over a dozen Power-ups, more levels than past iterations (Super Bomberman 5 has 13 levels, others had a max of 10), a killer soundtrack, and a cast of strange playable characters (even a Create A Character option!), it makes for a crazy multiplayer experience.People who have played Bomberman know what it is about; it is a fairly simple game. The game has two modes, “Normal Game” and “Battle Game”. Basically, the Normal Game features a “story” where you explore different levels to progress, defeating enemies and solving grid-based puzzles where you use your bombs to break “tiles” on the grid (different levels have different breakable blocks; forest levels have bushes, ice levels have ice, etc.) to reveal an exit point and move on to the next level. Every once in a while a “Boss” appears (usually one of the generic playable character from Battle Mode) and you have to fight them to progress, and that’s usually just the same as a Battle Mode Match (blow your opponent up before they take you out). The Normal Game will keep you busy for a while with it wide variety of colourful stages and enemies, but the Battle Mode is where this gem truly shines.Battle Mode is just as it says – a mode where you compete with other players to blast each other off the screen. You start in one of the corners of the map, and you have one bomb. You place the bomb and blow up obstacles in your way with the intent to find Power-ups which make your bombs more potent (Flames make your bomb’s explosion have more range, Bomb icons grant you another bomb, Kickers allow you to kick bombs out of your way, etc.) and trap your opponents to be the last man (or woman) standing. The game also features little guys called “Rooi”, which look like a hybrid kangaroo-bunny creature. Each colour has a different ability (Fat green ones allow you to dash madly across the stage, yellow ones can kick obstacles out of your way, black ones can drop rows of bombs to easily trap opponents, etc.) and they also allow you to take another hit before dying by sacrificing themselves, a valuable function that makes them one of the most desirable things to find on the map. As the clock starts ticking towards the end, the pressure to kill your friends is higher because the whole stage starts to be destroyed within the last minute. Both players surviving results in a draw, and nobody claims the victory. The Battle Mode was present on all the other Bomberman titles, but it is the small differences that make this game the best of the bunch. First of all, there is a Create A Character Mode, which none of the other games had. It allows you to customize your character; who doesn’t like to do that? Don’t expect it to be like say, The Sims... it’s not THAT detailed, but it’s still fun. Another thing I REALLY liked about this game is that the Rooi have differences that help distinguish what they do. In Super Bomberman 3, they also made an appearance, but the only way you could tell what their abilities were besides their colour was through trial and error, which makes for less fun for new players. In SB5 they have quirks about them (Pink ones can hop over obstacles, so they have pogo sticks, green ones are fat so they can run… somehow, red ones can punch so of course they have boxing gloves, and so forth) to make it MUCH EASIER to figure them out, and makes the game a lot more accessible for new players. The game may sound simple, and that’s because IT IS. It doesn’t take away from its fun factor though. The game is A BLAST with friends, and makes for one of the best party games I have ever played. The coolest thing about the game is that you can use a SNES Multitap, to allow up to five players to play on one TV! Take THAT, Mario Party and Rock Band! As a matter of fact, the SNES Multitap was first created for the Bomberman series.
You also need an emulator to run this game. To grab one quickly, please check out our SNES emulators section.