Puzzle games have never been my cup of tea.
Part to it has to do with the fact that I had grown up playing all sorts of action-packed games, ranging from the guiding Mario and Luigi through the many worlds of Super Mario Bros to the endless battlefields of Front Line and Battle City. Those games shaped my taste for gaming and my understanding that a good title would have to be hyper-stimulating, always moving and with absolutely no breathers... all things that can never be associated with most puzzle games.
But about a decade later I watched the AVGN review some Virtual Boy games on YouTube, and he briefly mentioned one that could easily be the one to win me over: Panic Bomber!
This is what a typical board looks like. Between the funny backgrounds, charming graphics, and your opponent's over-the-top reactions, it's honestly hard to look away.
Because of my incredibly poor understanding of the English language at the time (and also because I was as green as they come when it came to doing my own research), I had already written this one off that as something exclusive to the VB, a console that was hell to emulate and incredibly tough to experience outside of real hardware. Panic Bomber! looked awesome, like the kind of "Tetris" game I had always dreamed of having... but it was not to be.
However, many years later I learned that the game had actually been released on both Arcade form, as well as on home consoles... but only in Japan.
Learning that I could actually play this thing on all those platforms really opened the floodgates for me, but it took a while to get the whole experience down... I really favored the Arcade version, but I had a really miserable time trying to get it going, so I moved on to the Nintendo 64 version, which was tucked away inside the Japanese release of Bomberman 64. When that failed due to the incredibly torturous experience that's emulating an N64, I chose the third (and final) option: The Super Famicom port.
To my infinite surprise, this was a blast to play and really easy to find my way around, despite me not knowing any Japanese whatsoever. I have always thought that being able to figure out the basics on your own was the mark of a good game, and Panic Bomber! delivered (on the Super Famicom, at least).
Chaining some combos just as your opponent is starting to clear their side of the board is extremely fun and satisfying. This is a great game to play if all you want to do is to annoy your friends through some luck and strategy.
Panic Bomber! is a cool variation on the classic "Tetris" formula: multicolored blocks fall down and you have to match at least three of them (either vertically, horizontally or diagonally) to clear a row. Every once in a while an unlit bomb would fall in there as well, and is your job to place it strategically to help you clear the board later. After vanishing a certain number of blocks from your side of the board, a lit bomb would fall down as well, and you would have to place it strategically to cause as much damage as possible, triggering a chain reaction by making it blow up the unlit bombs you had previously moved around and any junk blocks you were stuck with. It's really self-explanatory and fun to play.
What makes the game so addicting is the fact that you are always competing against the CPU, and it's nice seeing these charming little fellas as they react to the state of the match, starting out cocky and gradually turning, well, panicked as you keep cluttering their side of the field with junk blocks and other unusable pieces that they would have to get rid of as soon as possible, always under the mounting pressure of having their side of the field completely filled out with each passing moment.
The first few levels are remarkably easy, but the game doesn't shy away from showing its fangs once it let you have your fun, however. You'd be making a near perfect run, swiftly destroying the CPU at its own game, and suddenly your fortunes will be completely reversed as the opponent would start chaining combos and eventually summoning the big bomb, which would absolutely wreck your day solely by the sheer amount of space it can clear with a single blast. It keeps you looking back-and-forth between both sides of the board and it becomes a really intense game as a result.
One thing that's kinda annoying is that the game pulls the classic move of not letting you see the full thing at a lower difficulty, which is fine by me, but it would have been really nice if I knew that before clicking around the menus without having any clue of what any of the text meant (which is a 100% my fault, but the game usually has some sort of visual representation for what the other options do to kind of let you figure out what's happening, so it's kind of cheap that that doesn't happen here). However, I'd argue that that's actually fair on the grounds that the relaxed pace of the easiest difficulties would mean that you'd get absolutely wrecked by the final levels almost immediately, which would cause the game to lose its fun factor entirely.
I think that half the reason for which this game is so well-loved is because of the enemy characters. They are all fun, charming and entertaining.
As always, I think that this game is better enjoyed when playing against a human opponent, and so I'm happy to report that Panic Bomber! is one of my kid's favorite games. He's always challenging me to it, and It's genuinely a pretty fun experience, specially since the game lets you set up the difficulty for each player individually meaning that a younger or more inexperienced player won't get steamrolled before getting to grips with the game's (sometimes quirky) mechanics, which I really appreciate, as it keeps things fair.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that the controls on this one are near perfect, being very tight and responsive when they need to be. The only real complain I have is that I have noticed some jittery movement here and there, but I'm willing to chalk that up to emulation weirdness and not to the game itself.
The graphics are as charming and colorful as any other offering on the system. Porting the entire arcade experience into the much more limited, catridge-based Super Famicom couldn't have been easy, but the animations and effects are all preserved on this one. Sure, the use of static images when talking to your opponents outside of the main game feels a little stiff, but the many faces they pull as their luck changes on the battles themselves more than makes up for it.
I actually don't think that the music and sound effects are all that great for a title of this magnitude, which almost shocks me. Some tunes are catchy and the sound effects as you clear rows are satisfying (if unspectacular), but I guess I expected something more vivid and "alive" to go along with the many hours I was prepared to sink into this one. The voice samples as either you or your opponent are defeated are pretty funny, though.
And, of course, this one is just a blast with friends (pun very much intended).
Would I recommend Panic Bomber!? Well... let's put it this way: everyone who's been here long enough has heard me gosh over this one time and again, often bringing it up every time it kinda fit the topic at-hand, which is something only a few other games have managed to make me do.
The fact that I could cover its entire gameplay formula in one single paragraph is perhaps the biggest compliment I could give it -- this one doesn't overcomplicate things unnecessarily, and lets you take command of the game by applying your own tactics and strategies to the different scenarios without fighting you at every step of the way. You are gonna get frustrated by the later levels, but just enough that you won't want to give up.
And hey: Panic Bomber! was the first (and so far only) puzzle game that I have ever completed. Let that be a recommendation in-and-on itself.
Pros
- + Easy to pick up and play.
- + High replayability.
- + Responsive controls.
- + Charming graphics with lots of personality.
- + Great as a multiplayer experience.
Cons
- - Lackluster sound.
- - Pretty inconsistent difficulty.
- - Full experience locked out for those playing on lower difficulties.
8
Gameplay
8
Graphics
6
Sound
10
Replayability
7
out of 10
Overall
At first glance, Super Bomberman - Panic Bomber W (or simply "Panic Bomber!") doesn't look like much, but that illusion is quickly shattered as soon as you actually start playing and sort of fall into its rhythm. What we have here is a highly-addicting game that could have been even greater with some minor tweaks. Still, I'd completely recommend it to anyone even slightly interested on the genre.
