Now many of you may know of this game but little else. Essentially there are 100 stages in the main campaign. In each stage, it shows a preview of what the puzzle will look like and then you get to try your hand at it. You can only fire one marble per attempt and you must time and angle it right to destroy all the bombs that appear on screen. A simple enough concept except getting a perfect score is much more demanding.

Each set of 10 stages must be played as a set. You get two attempts to try each stage but in order to get a perfect score of 100 for each stage, you must clear them on the first try. This adds a lot of replay value and challenge but can feel kinda cheap in some ways. What's weird is that each time you attempt one of the sets, the order of the stages is rearranged so it forces you to stay alert.

The stages vary in atmosphere from a training ground to a jungle, a beach, outer space, and then a soccer style stadium. Along with that the mechanics change slightly so it helps things stay fresh. One of the interesting things I saw was a new type of bomb. When struck with a marble, it spits out two bombs in opposing directions. I only saw this in one (two?) stages total.



Another cool Easter egg is the appearance of the Dastardly Bombers. I'm taking a few liberties saying this but it does suggest that the enemies we see are them. They don't play any role in the story, just as an obstacle.



The World Bombers can even be seen in the final areas.



Thanks to the power of save states, I was able to clear this game with a perfect score. When you win, a few things change. The title screen changes the color of Bomberman as well as the music. It also changes the color of the marble you fire in the main game.



It also unlocks two new modes: Special and Survival. In Special, you play through 10 random stages from the main game and you have the option of adding power ups to your Bomberman. The image to the left is your original character while the middle one includes most of the powerups. Let me explain them:

-The head will show a cursor on the stage that indicates which bomb to aim for.
-The blue wings effect the angle of the marble (or so I believe.)
-The skates allow Bomberman to move left and right more quickly.
-The red marble is like a bowling ball. It will smash through multiple bombs instead of exploding on impact.
-The far right image with the yellow cannon fires multiple marbles from it, only usable with the standard marble.



Survival mode has you play through all the stages in an attempt to clean sweep them. I'll have more on this later, assuming I'm sane enough to get through it.

Finally here's a short GIF of the ending.