Bomberman is a much loved multiplayer game, and with the Nintendo 64 having four controller ports built in, an N64 version seems like a no-brainer, you could even have 8 players by having players sharing controllers, one using D-pad and L and the other using C-buttons and R.

Bomberman 64, however, leaves multiplayer to be an afterthought, focusing instead on a 3D puzzle-platform game.

The start of Bomberman 64 is immensely more difficult than the rest, with the main challenge working out the mechanics of the game. The controls feel extremely imprecise and the game gets you to use the barely-working method of dropping a bomb and then pressing b to pick it up – except if you get close to a bomb, you’ll kick it and it will slide away.

Then, after you’ve completed the first world, the game tells you “oh, if you press A and B together, you’ll hold it straight away”. It’s strange that the game lets you struggle with it before telling you the proper way to play.

Little frustrations plague the game. From thin platforms that aren’t suited to the game’s controls, the game hiding objects in places where the game’s bad camera struggles to see and that once you’ve figured out the main mechanics, you realise that there aren’t really any puzzles other than roaming around, hoping you’re going the right way.

Your bombs also explode in a circle, with the blast radius increasing slightly every time you collect a power up, which makes it very difficult to judge how far your bomb will explode, although even at the maximum, it’s nothing compared to the + shape explosions we know and love from Bomberman, one that is integral to the gameplay.

To get to the credits, there are 5 zones, each with 2 levels and 2 bosses. The bosses are quite tedious and not exciting, and Bomberman can only take one hit. There are also golden cards to collect. To collect these, you have to search every nook and cranny, as well as attack bosses in certain ways – with no clues for any of them.

If you find all 100, and fight the boss again, you’ll unlock the secret final world, but when the game is so tedious to play, is more even a good thing?

Bomberman 64 is slow, tedious and the transition to “3D” has taken away everything that made Bomberman fun and enjoyable. It’s no surprise that Bomberman ended up returning to its 2D gameplay.

Poor

When it isn’t being tedious, this mode just about works. There’s not much to it, admittedly, and it suffers from all sorts of minor annoyances – such as having to work blind when the environment obscures your view; enemies who regenerate out of sight, in places you’ve thought you’d cleared; exploration puzzles that hide things from the usual perspectives.

Zy Nicholson, N64 Magazine #8. Review Score: 50%

Remake or remaster?

There are much better Bomberman games to focus on instead.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Bomberman 64