Collection essentials #319 & #320: Saturn Bomberman (Saturn) and Saturn multitap

I talked about one Bomberman game previously. You can refer to that previous post to read more about what Bomberman is. There are very many Bomberman games in existence, and this here is arguably the very best one.

The other item on display here is the Saturn’s multitap adapter. Like most consoles up to this point, the Sega Saturn has two controller ports, allowing for two players simultaneously. And most such consoles had some kind of adapter to allow more than two controllers hooked up at once. The SNES adapter which I showed off in my previous Bomberman post had four controller slots. The Saturn adapter has six! And on top of that, you can attach two of them at the same time to the console. Saturn Bomberman supports up to TEN players simultaneously!! Very few games can boast that, and Bomberman is especially good for such a large number. I would argue, though, that eight is actually the optimal number of players because you can play on a wide variety of maps with different gimmicks, whereas when you have more than eight players you are limited to one rather generic map. 

You can play as a variety of characters, some of which amusingly come from Hudson Soft’s other games such as Bonk and Milan. The characters don’t have any gameplay differences, though. There are a variety of gameplay options to customize your experience a little. One great feature is “Mad bomber” which lets dead players move around the edge of the screen dropping bombs and trying to cause chaos and mess up the survivors. Stage gimmicks range from things like conveyor belts, to warp points, to a soccer field where a “goal” leads to huge beams of fire, and more. 

I haven’t had too many Bomberman parties in my life, though I kind of wish I had! Most notably, I did manage to have some 10-player matches at my birthday party in 2014, which was really awesome. There have been a couple times in the past year where I’ve gotten to play with a larger group, including with six strangers at this year’s Retro World Expo. 

I don’t have a lot else to say about this game, honestly. It’s just one of the best large-scale local multiplayer games there is, making it a worthy collection essential.