Think of this as a preview of a review I might write once I've played the game more.
Bomberman 64 (Japan, 2001) - I beat the short and not-too-hard Bomberman mode in this game today. Remember, this is entirely different from the American Bomberman 64 game that was called Baku Bomberman in Japan. That game's good too, for sure, though. But for this game, this entirely 2d, sprite-based 2001 N64 Bomberman 64 game has four modes: Bomberman, Panic Bomber, Samegame, and Bomber Park [aka Bomberman Land]. It's got variety, then, but not depth -- none of the modes have the full variety of modes and options that they do as stand-alone games, unfortunately.
First, Bomberman, The Bomberman game is very short and lacking in challenge. It does have reasonably good replay value, though -- the game uses a branching level tree, Outrun-style. At the end of each stage you can choose to go up or down, depending on which exit you take. So, each game is only half an hour long, but at least when you replay it you can see different stages. Still, there isn't as much here as in many other Bomberman games, and it's not as hard either. I've never beaten a traditional Bomberman game, but I beat this one in an in-game time of 32 minutes, playing it today, and it's only the second time I've played the game. I like the visual variety, as each vertical slice of stages has a new tileset, and there is a nice variety of enemies, but with only 10 stages per play, even with a handful of routes this won't have the length of play of even one of the shorter, later Super Bomberman games, I don't think. At least it looks nice and plays well, though, which makes it quite fun! I like the '00s-style Bomberman here, he's cute without the annoying cutesey sound effects of, say, Bomberman Generation (Gamecube). I like the look better than Super Bomberman 1 or 4. But... there are few bosses, you keep your bomb range and drop number powerups after you die, and there are only 10 stages per game, so it really is short and relatively easy. Still though, I had fun and will definitely play it again to try to improve my time and see another route.
Of course, it's also got fantastic classic 2d Bomberman multiplayer, that would be great here I'm sure!
As for the other modes, I haven't beaten them yet (or in one case you can't), but I can say something. Panic Bomber has only vs. human (1-4 player) or endless, no vs. CPU story mode. It's a solid match-three puzzler with some twists, but visually is a bit bland, and if you want the full experience you need to get the Turbo CD and/or SNES Panic Bomber games (or the Virtual Boy version, for the only release with English-language story text, but get another one to play multiplayer because of course the VB doesn't have that). This is a good game and I can definitely see it getting addictive, but I wish it was the full game as seen before. There are two tilesets for the blocks available. Samegame is similar -- it's a stripped-down version of Samegame, with many fewer options than Hudson's feature-rich Super Nintendo Samegame title (Japan-only release). You've only got one mode, 'clear all the blocks', and only one tileset. The only option is field size; there are four available, small to large. Samegame is a deceptively simple game. It looks really easy at first, but actually clearing a board is tough! I rarely manage it. Samegame has only one graphical tileset, and it's barely Bomberman-themed. And last, Bomber Park is a Bomberman Land-style single player minigame collection, where you wander around a theme park as Bomberman and challenge the various minigames. There are maybe 15 minigames here, and most have two difficulties to challenge, so there is some variety but not nearly as much as in the full Bomberman Land games on PS1, PS2, GC, Wii, DS, and PSP. (The US only saw the DS and Wii games, and not the rest). Some of the minigames are better than others of course, but it's a fun mode to have. I like some of these, and the theme-park theme works. Of course I wish the people were talking English instead of Japanese, but ah well. This is the only mode with any language barrier, but thankfully most minigames are easy enough to understand, though you do lose out on understanding what the people you can talk to around the park are saying.
The game has no options beyond changing the tileset for Panic Bomber mode, either -- no difficulty settings, nothing. There is a high-scores screen, though, thankfully. The game keeps track of your five best times in Bomberman mode (with name entry), the five best scores in Panic Bomber (with name entry), the one best score in each of the four Samegame map sizes (with just the scores, no name entry), and the best score on each minigame in Bomber Park (with just the scores, no name entry). I would have liked to see name entry for all modes, but what's there is good.
So overall, how is Bomberman 64 (2001)? Well, it's okay. The main draw here is just playing these games on the N64, because there are no other N64 Samegame, Panic Bomber, Bomberman Land, or classic 2d Bomberman games, while this has all four of those games in one. However, the stripped-down nature of each game, with few modes and options, does hurt it. In single player, unless you really get into getting better scores, I don't think this game will hold most peoples' interest for long. Of course though, as a multiplayer game it is surely fantastic. 2d Bomberman is a great party game, and this has a great version of it! And 4-player Panic Bomber is great to see as well; the N64 has only a few 4-player puzzle games like this. The other two modes are single player, but the two multiplayer modes both could easily take up lots of time, no problem. But as a single player game, I would have liked to see more.
