Bomberman Series - Part 3

3-D Bomberman (1984)
By: Hudson Soft / Kawaguchi  Genre: Maze  Players: 1  Difficulty: Medium-Hard
Featured Version: MSX  First Day Score: 000,000 (seriously!)
Also Available For: Sharp X-1

It's been a while now since my last look at this great series but since returning to it I've discovered, apparently in my eagerness to progress through the series, that I missed one out! Now that I've realised this, however, I wish this particular offering had remained obscured from my sight until the end of time. For better or worse though, it does exist, and as you may have guessed from the title, it tries to do something a little different. In more recent years there have been a few attempts to turn our hero's world into a three-dimensional one but I thought Bomberman 64, which itself got a rather lukewarm reception, was the first one. It now appears that this isn't the case, for as far back as 1984, and immediately after the original game's release, Hudson released 3-D Bomberman, and it was something of unbridled horror.

Hmmm, what to do now...

Usually when writing about a game I try to remain impartial and detail the various facts and figures of a game before praising or criticising it accordingly, but this game is different. It is, you see, quite literally the original Bomberman but from a first-person viewpoint. This would be a concerning prospect on a modern consoles but on an MSX? It is, quite frankly, terrifying. The first problem is that all the walls are red with nothing to differentiate 'soft blocks', or destroyable parts of the wall. This means there's lots of identical-looking corridors that you'll most likely end up walking around aimlessly. If you walk into a dead-end, it's a good bet that it's a soft block in your way, so you can try laying a bomb. The viewpoint also makes it difficult to judge distance accurately though, so you'll have to run far away to be sure of avoiding the blast (which looks like a untuned TV). Once you've turned back round you'll probably be unable to find where you were so you'll have to wander aimlessly some more.

Yep, that's one of the rather psychotic-looking enemies...

As you might expect, there are enemies in the mazes but you'll rarely spot one and when you do it's very difficult to kill one. Lest we forget, the most effective way of doing this in normal Bomberman games is to trap them in a dead-end but it's no longer possible to watch them from afar and then move in when the timing's right. There is a very basic scanner in the corner which shows enemies, but it doesn't show walls so it's not a great deal of help really! Technically the game is reasonable enough - the mazes (and they literally are mazes now) move pretty quickly and smoothly, more so than I would've expected, but that's not the problem - this style of game just shouldn't have been attempted in 3D, back then or now! It's really, really not an entertaining game to play - it's confusing and very easy to get lost, and there's no variety whatsoever. There's probably a few power-ups and maybe a few different enemies to be found if you persevered, but to be honest I couldn't handle playing it long enough to find out. I feel like I need a shower...

RKS Score: 2/10