Everyone likes to blow things up. In Bomberman Tournament, you do just that.
User Rating: 7.3 | Bomberman Story GBA
As stated before, there are two modes in Bomberman Tournament: Quest and Battle. Quest is the single-player story based adventure. Fellow bomber Max was checking out a disturbance on the planet Phantarion, but never returned. As Bomberman, you must go to Phantarion and search the planet for Max and rid the planet of evil! Not the most creative story, but it works. Quest Mode plays like a watered-down version of Nintendo’s Pokémon. You collect a bunch of cute creatures known as Karabom, and duel trainers with them. They are all based on an element and this becomes part of the strategy while fighting. But Karabom battles are not quite as exciting as they might initially sound. A battle is divided into three rounds. When the duel starts, you must pick battle sequences for each of these three rounds. These battle sequences are made up of “attack”, “defend”, and “special”. Inspired, isn’t it? Once you choose, you watch your Karabom duel it out with the other trainer’s Karabom. And that’s all you do. You watch, and perhaps pray. It leaves you with this sick feeling that there’s practically no strategy involved aside from the elementary properties of your cute creatures. It’s my opinion that the player should never feel like he’s not in control in a videogame. Outside of battle, these Karabom perform other moves like teleportation. Also, they can be fused together to solve certain puzzles in the game. Besides the Karabom, Bomberman can still bomb enemies and objects he finds when running around in order to get necessary items. However there is a flaw in this as well. It takes about 3 seconds for each bomb to explode, so it becomes a chore destroying objects and enemies. As Bomberman progresses through the game, he gets new types of bombs to use, which is pretty cool, but the game still sometimes feels like it’s going along at a grueling pace.
Thankfully, Hudson did not decide to make Quest mode the only mode in the game. The real highlight of Bomberman Tournament is the Battle mode and the game’s multiplayer mode which lets you and three other friends play with only one cartridge. The object of a battle is to blow the other players up with your bombs, while at the same time collecting battle enhancing itemsThe game features eight battle arenas which are each unique in some way. It features all of the favorite items of Bomberman’s past such as Fire Up, Bomb Up, Kick Bomb, the Power Glove, and viruses. Battle mode is very fun, and really becomes the reason to purchase this game, especially if you have a few GBA-owning friends.
