Video games have been around a long time now and some of our longest running franchises (usually Nintendo as the others don’t tend to have long running franchises, well at least compared to Nintendo) have been hitting milestones for a fair bit now. Games hitting their 25th year, 30th year and 35th. But what about the 33rd? surely it’s a bigger milestone than 30?

Super Bomberman R is a lovely return to form for this recently overlooked gaming mascot. Back in the 16 bit era (SNES and Genesis) he was on both sides of the war (the ancient console war of the 90s, many friendships were formed, broken and lives lost as the armies of the red plumber faced off against the horde of the blue hedgehog). Bomberman was in his own series of games… but we kind of covered this in Super Bomberman 2 already.

Well anyway times had been tough – much like Sonic Bomberman had difficulty moving into the 3rd dimension. He had attempts on the N64, and they were, ok… But then the worst thing any nerd will tell you happened. He got a dark and gritty reboot ( yes, the death words of any franchise)   But first the Switches launch there was a surprise gem hidden under Zelda, Super Bomberman R.

Super Bomberman R plays like the classic Bomberman games of old, and that’s exactly what it needed to do. You get 2 main modes, the classic multiplayer where many players can face off against each other and try to blow each other up, or the story mode WITH CUTSCENES. I enjoyed the story a lot, you get cutscenes at the start of each world, before the boss and after the boss, which like Super 2 has you fight an evil bomber first before a giant robot. To get to the boss though you need to get through each gimmicky world that has challenges to clear a level, these range from kill all the enemies, bring all the civilians to a safe location, grab all the keys  or just survive for a set time against unending waves of enemies.

You get to select at the start (assuming you didn’t get any downloads) with 8 Bombermen each a different colour, and each with their own personalities that you will find out as you play as them or view the cutscene. However after you complete the game you unlock the ability to purchase the evil bombermen you fought against (what’s that, unlocking something by actually playing the game, the devil you say) of course these cost money that you get by, yes playing the game either completing a world in story mode or playing multiplayer. Some of these extra bombers have special abilities that I have yet to fully discover (can’t work out how Dracula works exactly).

Super Bomberman R is a good return for this iconic yet overlooked character and as mentioned was a surprise gem on the Switch but can now be purchased on the other consoles aswell. (there did the whole review without making bomb puns)

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