Otherwise a few years after it came out I spent a long string of weekends with 3 friends and the CPU set to best, bombing the hell out of each other.

It even features cameo appearances by other Hudson characters! Truth be told I’ve never experienced with 10 human players – the most I’ve managed is 6 humans, and 4 computer opponents, at the UK’s Game On museum exhibit, where the game was set-up on an enormous screen (it could have even been a projector). The biggest draw though is the simultaneous 10-player action. Oh, and let’s not forget that it used the Saturn pad, the best digital d-pad specific controller ever released (the Japanese one anyway – I have no idea what the hell Sega were thinking when they redesigned it to resemble a breeze block, those western pads are an oversized abomination like most western pads are). A lot of earlier Bomberman games were dull in single-player, but Saturn Bomberman really went all out to make this fun – I’ve completed it a few times. Also, for once the single-player campaign is as good as the multiplayer, with large sometimes multi-sectioned levels, a decent variety of enemies and maze-like layouts, and generally some excellent design. It also has some truly beautiful sprite-based visuals, complete with rotation, scaling and really good animation. Saturn Bomberman’s plus points are many: it has a really cool intro and ending, and throughout the game the audio is fantastic.

In fact I’ve never found any other Bomberman game to even come close to the greatness of the 10-player Saturn edition. As expected it’s good, but nowhere near as good as Saturn Bomberman. With the reduction in price of Bomberman Ultra on yesterday’s UK PSN update (from £8 down to £4), I finally bought it. Saturn Bomberman was released over 13 years ago, and despite regular sequels, including the online-capable current-gen Bomberman games, it has never bettered.

Atomic bomberman lan