Favorite single-screen games

[Stevens]

My brother and I were playing Bomberman 2 on the SNES. Much shit talking ensued.

[Sima Tuna]

Is there a version of bomberman that's available on modern systems and doesn't suck?

How is Exvania? I see it's on arcade archives.

[Randorama]

I am by no means an expert on the Bomberman series, but I looked up some info and found out that the series is now 40 years old (!!!) (read here and here). It started at Hudson Soft but Konami now handles the series' rights. The series includes a lot of tie-ins (e.g. an anime), too. I personally have a very limited experience of the series: I agree with Sumez that the two Irem arcade titles are brilliant (see here and here), and I also liked the Neo Geo entry (i.e. Neo Bomberman, by Hudson Soft).

I remember having irrational amounts of fun playing Saturn Bomberman, since it has co-op and a story mode that makes the game play a bit like an arcade game. Besides, it is a beautiful game. A random "best list" I found online suggests that the SNES/Saturn titles represent the peak of the series, and that the passage to Konami has acted as a death sentence for the series (...I can believe that). If it is an option, I would go for the arcade titles plus the old console titles. No idea if the entries in 3D and/or anything newer than fifth generation consoles (i.e. PS1, Saturn) are good, frankly.

...I admit that I really, really suck at Bomberman, in general. It is one of those games that hinge on a mechanic that I will never really learn properly, but I always loved nevertheless

[Sumez]

I am by no means an expert on the Bomberman series, but I looked up some info and found out that the series is now 40 years old (!!!)

I have nearly every Bomberman game ever released physically, so of course I got ya


The only ones I'm missing are 3-D Bomberman (the first person game which was actually the second game of the series), Net de Bomberman (game can't even start now when servers are offline), and the N-Gage one.

Spoiler

The Saturn version is a clear fan favorite when it comes to Bomberman's battle mode mostly because you can play 10 people at the same time. But these days, fan project Power Bomberman kind of obsoletes that.
I think Single Player Bomberman is really underrated, but also it's kind of broken in most entries of the series, so maybe that is understandable.
My favourites outside of Bomber Man World, are Super Bomberman 5, Super Bomberman 2, and Bomberman GB3.
Saturn's singleplayer mode is really cool and beautiful, but suffers from the typical issue of you becoming invincible the moment you get remote trigger bombs.

How is Exvania? I see it's on arcade archives.

Not very exhilarating unfortunately. The idea is cool though. I wish there were more Bombermanlikes.

[D]

A month back, I played 10 player Saturn Bomberman on a 120" projection screen with some crappy projector. I even made several custom ISO versions with different music. Mostly with different music from within Saturn Bomberman, but also one with the ending theme to Bomberman 64.
It was legendary
projection screen was below 100 bucks from amazon and worked quite well.
projectors can be bought second hand for a couple of tens
So no huge investment to get this up and running (after you have the Saturn set up already)

Speaking of Bomberman GB3, for all of you music fans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nme8m77 ... p=iAQB8AUB
How hard does this track go? (Deserves it's own thread)

[Sumez]

So no huge investment to get this up and running (after you have the Saturn set up already)

Well you also need two multitaps and 10 controllers, which is usually the biggest obstacle.
I've had the fortune to try this setup (always with a projector) several times throughout history though, and it's always been a blast!

[Randorama]

Whoa Sumez, that's one impressive collection The remarkably trivial question of the day is: are there any entries that offer interesting score-driven experiences? I remember these two friends of mine who played the two Irem games a lot, but I don't remember if they were focusing on the 1-CC only, or if they also cared about score. Does it make sense to play those entries for this latter aspect?

[Sumez]

are there any entries that offer interesting score-driven experiences? I remember these two friends of mine who played the two Irem games a lot, but I don't remember if they were focusing on the 1-CC only, or if they also cared about score. Does it make sense to play those entries for this latter aspect?

The Irem games are probably the best for scoring, but there's not much depth to it - it basically just measures how far you get and how well you managed to not die, since your remaining lives is used as a multiplier for your stage score bonus. Time is also a multiplier though, and of course you don't want to miss any of the BONUS letters that gives you the bonus stage for a potential 1UP. But there are no real "risky expert strats" to get notably faster times that I'm aware of. And of course anything other than a 1LC is not going to be competitive.

Neo Bomberman has an actual scoring system, but IMO it's stupid as fuck. Basically, the more enemy kills you're able to chain while explosions are still on screen, the higher your point bonus for the kill, since each chained kill doubles the value.
I think this mechanic might be intended to reward setting up bomb chain reactions, but in reality the superior strategy is getting block pass and remote trigger, and run around the entire stage setting up bombs near every enemy before you start blowing up any of the blocks. And then you trigger them all in quick succession, so the enemies die in a """chain""", each of them increasing your score exponentially.
Not particularly fun IMO, and if you die once and lose your powerups, your lose your ability to do this.

[Randorama]

OK, then my friends spent tons of time trying to get the 1-LC on both Irem games. I remember them succeeding, as they literally played each title for months on end but ultimately getting their goal ("the best score") a few times. I also remember playing Neo Bomberman in my uncle's arcade a bit (summer 1997, probably), but never going far (3 stages, max?), and those two friends of mine liking it. They were fans of the series, but I do not remember how dedicated they were (certainly they had the SFC/GB/etc. titles).

I like the series and the basic concept, but again I never really learnt to play any of the titles very well: it is one of those games that will probably remain inscrutable to me, period. NB's scoring system sounds "broken", for a lack of a better label. I imagine that once players have the right power-ups, they simply do not need to try to manipulate enemies and bombs so that they create smartly designed chains. Maybe it was popular, after all. I do think that it would be cool to have more "bomberman-like" games, but I also wonder if there are games with a similar vs. concept (or similar single-mode player? Clear single-screen stages, use weapon that can kill the character too, etc.).

[1KMS]

There was a versus action puzzle game similar to Bomberman on Sega Saturn called NOON that I recall being pretty fun, though I only ever played against the CPU.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzeeT1x1zGc
(I can't find quality play, so this is just for footage.)

The first Super Bomberman is gloriously unbalanced. You're given roughly 10 seconds of invincibility at the start of every stage, which you can exploit to go on a rampage. Here's a demonstration by bubufubu.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7bF35e ... 8F&index=2

[Sumez]

The first Super Bomberman is gloriously unbalanced. You're given roughly 10 seconds of invincibility at the start of every stage, which you can exploit to go on a rampage. Here's a demonstration by bubufubu.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7bF35e ... 8F&index=2

While this is a popular speedrun strategy, I think the game seriously suffers from the fact that it's also an extremely obvious strategy for casual players. There's even a a big chance you need to make use of it due to how enemy spawns work (if one or more coins spawn near you, there is no way to survive without starting bomb blasts during your invincibility)

While it seems funny at first, it's also the reason I consider Super Bomberman 1 one of the worse games of the franchise

[PC Engine Fan X!]

The PC Engine Super CD-Rom2 based "Card Angels" is a single-screen based game in dealing with several card games including Speed and Black Jack. If you play on "Free Play" mode and select the BJ game (on "Easy" difficulty setting) along with a CPU character to play against, it's seems that the CPU always has the "upper hand" to beat the player on any given round by just a point or two over the player's dealt hand -- it's quite possible that the CPU BJ dealer can score 21 twice in a row back-to-back from time-to-time (especially within a 10 round BJ gaming session indeed). It's also possible to win a single BJ round with a hand of 14, 15 or even 16 (but that doesn't happen that often in reality). The player has to assume that he or she will end up getting a high card of a King, Queen, Jack or a Ten to play against the two cards already dealt with and end up going "Burst" (aka "Bust" as the CPU hilariously likes to "call it" when the player goes over 21).

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Every once in a great while you'll end up beating the "Card Angels" CPU BJ dealer but most of the time, it'll end up winning instead -- why is that? The game developer, Fujicom Co. Ltd., was the group of folks whom made the SCD game of "Card Angels" and it's a fun way to play BJ to "pass the time" on the venerable PCE gaming platform given it's 1994 initial release in Japan at the time.
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What's cool about the PCE SCD of Card Angels is, it has support for both the optional Nec Avenue Pad 3 & the Nec Avenue Pad 6 in utilizing buttons I, II & III for the card game of "Speed." How cool is that? You can still use an traditional 2-button endowed PCE gamepad and use the Run button as button III when playing the game of Speed if it needed be.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[PC Engine Fan X!]

So no huge investment to get this up and running (after you have the Saturn set up already)

Well you also need two multitaps and 10 controllers, which is usually the biggest obstacle.
I've had the fortune to try this setup (always with a projector) several times throughout history though, and it's always been a blast!

Bomberman '94 and Bomberman '93 on the PC Engine and TurboGrafx-16 with a Hu-Card convertor were awesome to play 5 vs 5 "all-out" battles, especially when money's involved & given to the winner to "spice things up." Of course, to host such a 5 vs 5 match requires either a PCE multi-tap (or a Turbo Tap as with the TG-16) along with five PCE gamepads (or five Turbo Pads) and the heated matches will commence. It's quite fun to have a 5 vs 5 match played to five rounds maximum for ultimate bragging rights.

Yes, hooking up a PCE or TG-16 to an LCD screen projector for such Bomberman matches is quite fun & priceless indeed. It's also fun to watch the CPU battle itself out amongst five CPU controlled opponents as sometimes, a round will end up being a "draw" -- the "High Speed" matches played with Bomberman '94 with 5 vs 5 CPU foes are awesome to watch unfold in real time as well.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Randorama]

Greg has posted a beautiful thread about Pac-Man's 45th anniversary event in Tokyo (see here). I acknowledge that I mentioned about starting to write posts about maze games, but real offline life is again putting a dent in my fictional online plans. Greg, if you are reading this and you feel in the mood to start a conversation about Pac-Man and its legacy, I would be delighted and you would probably have a wide audience: this thread is quite successful, I daresay