Format: Cartridge
Genre: Action
Developer: Michal Okowicki
Publisher: RGCD

Bomberland opens with a beautiful, colorful, and also humorously cognitive dissonance-invoking intro. From there, it makes way for stage after stage of tiled levels, obviously-inspired-by-Bomberman stages, connected by a clean menu system with a scrolling background. There are various world themes on offer, including a water zone with splashes around the character's feet! The character and all enemies are sprites: they are well-animated and have lots of charm.

Owen Crowley supplies the music, which are all faithful SID reproductions of classic Bomberman tunes: tons of different "instruments" are in use, and all of the available channels are constantly interweaving during the melodies. There are even sound effects during play as well, and they hardly interfere with the soundtrack at all. In some regards these are the best versions of these Bomberman tunes-- especially "Song 4"-- due to the charm with which the SID chip conveys them.

It's hard to believe it, but Bomberland is a complete Bomberman game-- full single player campaign, and a complete five-player battle mode-- running on the Commodore 64 hardware from 1982. It even doles out passwords every few stages! What makes Bomberland truly unique though is that it has a number of gameplay features all its own, which give the formula a unique twist. The controls are razor sharp, and performance is wonderful even in stages which scroll in sometimes all directions!

Bomberland has a unique and addictive risk, reward mechanism: power-downs and exit portals themselves can be bombed, causing additional enemies to pour out! These added baddies provide massive bonus points, but beware: the stage can not be exited until all enemies on the level are killed. Ergo, maximizing high scores involves a delicate balance between spawning more enemies while also not running out of time. Overall, Bomberland is an incredible technical achievement, and is simply a great Bomberman game even regardless of which platform it's on.