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  • Everyone has that one game from their childhood that was just the scourge from hell. And if

  • you grew up in the NES generation, you had your pick. Everyone had their kryptonite.

  • For me, it was Bomberman. It’s a simple premise at first: Youre a little robot

  • guy, youre in a maze filled with bricks and hostiles, and you can produce explosives

  • with which to deal with these things. Unfortunately, as the great Shinya Arino once commented,

  • This is a game that requires your complete concentration.” And six-year-old me often

  • had more important things to attend to, like a spark of Lego-related inspiration. It didn’t

  • hurt that this game could be the definition of brutal. 50 stages long, full of mobs with

  • weird AI, and if you die, all your good power-ups went PIFF. It remained in the periphery of

  • my gaming experience, on the outside looking in, as I devoted myself to plumbing the depths

  • of Bubble Bobble and the Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle.

  • So I find myself now revisiting this madness, and realizing... yeah, it’s still hardcore

  • as all get out. It’s seen a couple forms over the years, and some gameplay improvements,

  • but there’s still no replacement for this, the NES original. (Or, in this case, the NES

  • Classics release on the GBA.) Here was our introduction to the White-and-a-little-bit-of-Blue

  • Bomber, who, admittedly, was just a sprite ganked from Hudson’s port of the Broderbund

  • classic Lode Runner. All the stages look identical, with the same green background and grey blocks;

  • the only differences are in the distribution of hostiles. Granted, this alone doesn’t

  • make for a huge challenge... but the real issues are a little more peripheral. For example,

  • unless you have the corresponding power-up, your bombs are blocking terrain. With fuses.

  • It’s not uncommon for a Bomber, in his usual panic, to accidentally trap himself in a corner,

  • leading to a few uncomfortable seconds of quiet resignation before the inevitable explosion

  • and a nine-noteYou suckfanfare. Accidentally bomb a power-up, or the doors leading to the

  • next stage? Welcome to hell, kid, ‘cuz youre now swarmed with more mobs. Fail in any way,

  • and your precious remote control, any manuverability powers, and your general will to live will

  • disappear before your eyes. And if you should run out of lives...

  • Well, here’s the blessing of the NES Classics version: A save feature for your high score

  • and password. And it’s your salvation, too, because if not for that you’d have to enter

  • the entire 20-character password, manually scrolling through each letter, with no backspace.

  • Make a mistake on letter 19? You get to re-input the entire thing. Yeah. Not only that, this

  • version came before Bomberman discovered multiplayer. It’s kinda like Street Fighter 1 in that

  • respect: You see the beginnings of the epic experience you know, but it hasn’t quite

  • figured itself out yet. For the NES-style experience with the potential for deathmatches,

  • check out Bomberman Party Edition for the original PlayStation.

Everyone has that one game from their childhood that was just the scourge from hell. And if

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