You’ll get to blow up a lot of bricks and things over all these stages!

It’s Bomberman, not Bomber Man.

To Beat: Reach the ending
What I Did: Beat the game without dying
Played: 7/30/18 – 8/1/18
Difficulty: 2/10
My Difficulty: 2/10
My Video: Bomberman Longplay

The Bomberman franchise is one with a long history and a loyal fanbase. I think Bomberman really grew in popularity on the Super Nintendo with the Super Bomberman games. The simple nature of the game, combined with the SNES Multitap, made it a perfect party game for multiple people. He would have his solo adventures, and those games have their fans too, but the multiplayer is what most people remember and what they would prefer to play. I’m more a fan of the solo outings, and that’s what I got here with the NES version. Bomberman comes from a humble beginning, as this early title is a bare-bones adventure.

Bomberman got his start on home computers in Japan and Europe in 1983. The game was remade for the Famicom, releasing in December 1985. It was developed and published by Hudson Soft. The NES version would wait until January 1989. Since then, there have been dozens of Bomberman games spanning various consoles and computers. There wouldn’t be another Bomberman game after the Famicom/NES release until 1990, but then there were multiple games released every year all the way through 2010. There was another long hiatus until Super Bomberman R came out on the Nintendo Switch in 2017.

Bomberman is a top-down action game with kind of a sad story. Bomberman is named appropriately as he makes bombs all day in an underground compound and he doesn’t like his situation at all. He hears a rumor that if a robot like himself leaves the compound for the surface then he will become human. He leaps at the opportunity but other robots pursue him. Luckily, he has unlimited bombs of his own making which will help him. You beat the game by clearing all 50 stages.

Make way for Bomberman!

The game has simple controls. Bomberman can walk in four directions with the D-pad. The A button places a bomb which is locked to one of the tiles on the playfield. Eventually it blows up leaving a brief trail of fire on the playfield. Later in the game, Bomberman can detonate his own bombs with the B button. The Start button pauses the game. That’s all there is to it.

Bomberman is a really simple game too. Each stage is two screens wide and free scrolls left or right to follow the action. The playfield consists of indestructible columns spaced evenly apart. Sprinkled among the level are bricks that can be destroyed with a bomb blast. Usually you are blocked from parts of the stage and you have to bomb your way through. The goal of the game is to defeat all enemies in each stage, then locate the exit door and leave. You have to drop bombs in spots where the enemies will walk into the blast and get themselves killed, or you can trap them with your bombs near an explosion. All enemies plus Bomberman are killed by a single bomb blast, so there is a strategy element as you also need to keep yourself out of harm’s way. A chime will play when all enemies have been defeated. The exit door is hidden behind one of the destructible walls. It’s completely random so sometimes you’ll find it without trying and other times it’s one of the last bricks in the whole level.

There is a little information on the top of the screen during game play. The level timer begins at 200. Now usually you would lose a life when time expires, but here a bunch of strong enemies are introduced when the timer hits zero. In the early game, that’s just as bad as death. In the middle is your score. You earn points through defeated enemies and you can score more points per kill if you defeat multiple enemies with a single explosion. On the right side, labeled Left, is the number of remaining lives. You start with three lives and you earn one after beating each stage. That’s very generous!

Setting up chain reactions is both fun and dangerous.

The primary mechanic in Bomberman is the bomb blast. When a bomb is placed it stays dormant briefly before exploding. The blast extends outward in the four cardinal directions. It won’t travel through the solid columns or the destructible bricks, but it will rip right through enemies and Bomberman himself. If an explosion hits another bomb, that bomb also explodes immediately. Naturally, you can set up multiple bombs and set off a huge chain reaction. It’s all very intuitive and satisfying to rain fire on large portions of the stage. The catch of course is that you should be thoughtful in your placement so that you don’t get yourself caught up in the blast, whether you get greedy with bomb chaining or trap yourself in an unescapable spot.

Bomberman can find powerups. Each level has exactly one powerup hidden somewhere within a breakable block, just like the exit door. Collecting the powerup causes the music to change, which is an interesting and unusual way of reminding you that you don’t need to hunt for the powerup anymore. Here are the powerups you can find. The bomb powerup lets you lay one extra bomb on screen at a time. The smiling flame powerup extends the bomb blast one tile in each direction. At the start of the game, Bomberman can only lay one bomb at a time with a tiny blast radius. By collecting multiple bomb and flame powerups throughout the game, your bombing ability grows fast. The speed skates let Bomberman walk faster. The wall walk powerup lets you walk through the breakable walls, and the bomb walk powerup lets you walk through your own bombs. The detonator powerup is a heart with a small bomb on it. This lets you blow up the oldest bomb with the B button, and also causes bombs to stay dormant until you blow them up yourself. The flame proof powerup looks like a little person engulfed in flames. This keeps you from being hurt by your bomb blasts. The mystery powerup looks like a question mark and gives you temporary invincibility from enemies and bombs. All powerups except for the mystery powerup last until you die, while the bombs, flames, and speed skates are permanent upgrades.

It does make sense that you could also blow up both the powerups and the exit door. You might not want to do that. Blasting either one spawns several enemies which are typically more challenging ones than the initial enemies in that stage. Not only that, but if you blow up the powerup you lose it, putting you at a double disadvantage. The lesson here is that you want to be careful with explosives.

Blow up enemies in the bonus level without concern.

There are bonus stages sprinkled between some levels. The standard unbreakable columns are still there but there are no bricks to deal with. Each bonus level features only one enemy type but there are a lot of them and they keep coming. Bomberman is completely invincible from both enemies and explosions here, so this is a great place to go wild and set up huge chain reactions. This is simply a point-scoring affair, but it’s a fun break while it lasts. The bonus levels occur after every five levels for most of the game. For some reason they put the bonus areas after levels 39, 44, and 49 instead of multiples of five like it started out. I get that they didn’t want the game to end on a bonus stage, but I think they could have just adjusted only the final bonus level instead. I’m all about the minutia here on the site, so I just had to let you know about this.

Bomberman also features some special, hidden items. These are nothing to get excited about and are just for points, but they might appear in a playthrough when you don’t expect them. There are six of them. Each stage has one and there is a specific method to get it to appear in the stage. I’ll spare you the details on this one. Most players will not come across them at all because the requirements are kind of ridiculous. I didn’t in my playthrough, though I believe I found one in a past playthrough.

Lastly, there is a password system. Lose all your lives to get the password. These are 20-character passwords consisting of the letters A through P only. Passwords save the stage you are on, the number of bombs you can deploy, the blast radius, and even your score. Nice!

Strong powerups like this give you great versatility.

Though I have played Bomberman before, I haven’t played it all that much. I am pretty sure I played the SNES Bomberman games before playing this one, and it feels primitive in comparison. At least I had the basic idea down for how the game works. I beat the game for the first time a few years ago as part of the NintendoAge contests. Bomberman is a common game but it’s one of the more expensive commons, selling for over $15 for a loose cart today.

I think Bomberman is a really easy game. I was able to beat the entire game on one life on my second try. While the difficulty of the levels increases as you play, I believe the first level is the hardest one. You have little explosive range so you have to get a little too close to the enemies and they are tough to reach with bombs. You start off with a flame powerup in Stage 1 which helps out greatly. In Stage 2 you can get an additional bomb, and in Stage 3 you can get the detonator, putting the game into easy mode. With the detonator and cautious play, you probably shouldn’t die anymore the rest of the way. The flame proof powerup comes late in the game and pairing it with the detonator is ultra-powerful. Then you can drop bombs and immediately detonate them at your feet, essentially surrounding yourself with a fire shield for as long as you keep pressing the buttons. Even without the best powerups, you can still password creep through the game the long way.

Bomberman is a basic, but fun game. The core gameplay is solid, laying the groundwork for future titles. Aside from that hook, the game was primitive by the time it released on the NES in 1989. From a 1985 perspective, I can see why this was well regarded. It’s a fun game with a bunch of levels, randomly generated obstacles, and some neat powerups that make you feel very powerful by the end of it all. The music is catchy enough in its simplicity. The graphics do well enough to carry the idea of the game, but don’t offer anything further. I’m glad to have played it, but I don’t plan to go back to it.

#95 – Bomberman

It’s known as one of the worst NES games, and that mostly holds up.

Love that over half of the title screen is text.

To Beat: Reach the ending
Played: 9/29/17 – 10/2/17
Difficulty: 5/10
My Difficulty: 5/10
Video: AD&D Heroes of the Lance Longplay

Clearly, I am a huge gaming nerd, especially when it comes to Nintendo and the NES. Mostly I go it alone and play single-player games, but occasionally I will play multiplayer games. Tabletop gaming has become quite popular, and I do like to get together with friends to play sometimes. I don’t take it much farther than that, and so I have never been interested in Dungeons and Dragons. Maybe it’s the idea of a long campaign with a group of people that doesn’t appeal to me and my single-player ways. The NES has four games bearing the Dungeons and Dragons name and I had no interest in them. I had originally planned to skip them in this project altogether. However, plans change, so here we are with the first game in the set. AD&D: Heroes of the Lance is generally regarded as a bad game, and having played it for myself I can see why.

Dungeons and Dragons, abbreviated D&D, is a tabletop RPG that takes place in a fantasy setting. Players choose characters and team up to battle monsters and solve puzzles in scenarios devised and managed by a Dungeon Master. The game was originally published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc., or TSR, but is now published by Wizards of the Coast as of 1997. D&D split early on with the lighter game keeping the name, while a more rules-heavy experience was called Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, or AD&D. The NES games fall under the AD&D banner. These two games merged back together when the 3rd Edition of D&D released in the year 2000, and this structure remains today.

Naturally, there were many video games created or spun off from D&D. It’s mindboggling how many different series and games there are under so many different names that I can’t even begin to make sense of it myself let alone try to explain it. There are different series of games that might have familiar names to you, such as the Gold Box series, Baldur’s Gate, and Neverwinter Nights. Some follow the strict D&D ruleset, while others only utilize the setting. Several games are not RPGs at all. The NES received four different AD&D games, and in order of release they are Heroes of the Lance, DragonStrike, Pool of Radiance, and Hillsfar.

This intro screen has more color than anything else in the game.

AD&D: Heroes of the Lance was released on many home computers beginning in January 1988. The NES port of the game was released in January 1991, and the Famicom version came next in March 1991. It was developed by U.S. Gold Ltd. and Strategic Systems, Inc. Natsume is also credited as a developer, but as far as I can tell they are only linked to the game’s soundtrack. The NES game was published by FCI, while Pony Canyon published the Famicom game. The sequel, Dragons of Flame, was released on the Famicom in February 1992 but did not make it to the NES.

The story is based on the Dragonlance novels written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. In the land of Krynn, people have abandoned their traditions and faith, causing the Queen of Darkness, Takhisis, to awaken evil and take power in the land. The ruins of Xak Tsaroth hold the keys to restoring the traditions and regaining balance of power, and these keys are the Disks of Mishakal. Of course, Takhisis knows of the Disks and has sent the dragon Khisanth to protect them. You play the role of the party known as the Companions of the Lance, who must venture into Xak Tsaroth to fight the dragon, recover the disks, and restore the land of Krynn. After entering the ruins of Xak Tsaroth, the warrior Goldmoon of the Companions entrusted her blue crystal staff to a statue of the goddess Mishakal, who then blessed the staff and offered her power to aid in recovering the disks. You got all that, right?

Heroes of the Lance is one of the D&D games that is not a strict RPG. Instead, it is a side-scrolling dungeon crawler. You control the entire party of eight Companions of the Lance through the maze of Xak Tsaroth. All the action takes place in the side scrolling view. You enter other rooms to different parts of the maze, and the goal is to find the entrance to the next level of the dungeon. There are only three levels in the game, culminating in the final battle with Khisanth. Along the way you will fight enemies, jump over pits, cast spells, and collect items. You can rearrange your party of eight characters in any order you choose, and each member has their own stats, abilities, and weapons that aid in completing the adventure.

Perhaps this first screen is what many players have seen the most.

The eight characters in the party are Goldmoon, Sturm, Raistlin, Caramon, Tanis, Tasslehoff, Riverwind, and Flint. Goldmoon has the blue crystal staff which is used to cast clerical spells. Sturm is a powerful knight who wields a magical Long Sword. Raistlin is a physically weak mage with powerful magical abilities using the Staff of Magius. Caramon is another powerful warrior armed with both a sword and throwing spear. Tanis is a half-elf armed with a sword and a bow. Tasslehoff is of a race called kender, and he is armed with a hoopak which can be used as a sling for long range attacks and as a staff for close range combat. Riverwind is another strong fighter armed with a sword and a bow. Finally, Flint is a dwarf who wields both a battle axe and throwing axes.

The controls are complex and they change somewhat depending on the situation. You walk left and right using the D-pad. If you walk in the same direction for a while you will start running, or you can run by holding Up combined with either Left or Right. While running you can jump with A. You can also duck while standing still by holding A and pressing Down. That isn’t intuitive, but it occasionally helps. There is a compass on the bottom left of the screen, and one of the directions lights up if you are standing by a door. You can proceed through the door by holding either Up or Down depending on which side the door is on. You must hold the button for a full second to go through the door. You can use the B button combined with a direction for the lead character to use ranged weapons. If enemies are too close then you can’t use ranged weapons, and you also have to equip them before you can use them in the first place. The Select button both brings up and exits the main menu.

Combat introduces some different controls. If an enemy is near enough, the word Combat will display on the bottom. You can’t use ranged weapons anymore when this indicator in on. You can still move, duck, jump, run, and enter the menu the same as above. To attack the enemy with the lead character, hold down the B button to swing your weapon. You need to be right next to the enemy to land any hits. You can keep the B button held to do continuous attacks. You can also attack high by holding the D-pad diagonally Up and toward the enemy, and attack low diagonally with Down. Some enemies can only be hit high or low. You will see a little circle whenever you land an attack, but you will miss about as often as you hit.

Well actually this is the screen you will see the most often.

You will spend a lot of time in the game menu. While in the menu, press A to choose an option, press B to cancel and go back, and press Select to leave the menu. The Hero Select option lets you view each character’s stats, health, and items. You also use Hero Select to move party members around. Press A to choose a party member, and press A again when a different party member is highlighted to swap the two characters. Magic User Spells lets you use Raistlin’s spells, and Clerical Staff Spells lets you use Goldmoon’s spells. More on spells in a bit. The Use command lets you use some items like potions and equip some items like bows. For example, to equip Caramon’s throwing spear, go to the Use command, select Caramon, and then select the spear. It will then appear next to the Using field on both the Use or Hero Select screen when successfully equipped. The Score option shows you how many of each enemy you have killed as well as your experience points and score. Yes, Heroes of the Lance has a scoring system. The Give, Drop, and Take commands all move items around. Use the Give command to trade items between party members just like how you switch characters around. Drop puts an item on the ground, and Take is used to pick items up. You can find items on the ground or even in the background during play. Stand near one and use the Take command to give it to whichever party member you want. You can save the game at almost any time using the Save command, or load a save file anytime with the Load command. There are three save slots that either display as Old if it has save data or New if it is empty.

To cast spells with Raistlin or Goldmoon, you have to do two things. First, you must equip each character with their staff with the Use command. Second, you have to put the spellcaster in the front row. On the screen, the top four characters are in the front row and the others are in the back row. Party alignment is also important because any of the front row characters can take damage during combat, although the lead character is most likely to take the hit. Use either of the spell commands in the menu to display the spells and select one to cast it. While exploring, if the spellcaster is the lead character, you can simply cast the last spell used with the B button as a long range attack. In combat range, you must use the menu to cast spells.

Trapping enemies and running past them is an effective strategy.

Raistlin is the only character that can use the Magic User Spells option. This option displays the spell list and the charge meter showing how much power is left in the staff. Each spell uses up a different amount of charge, and when this meter is empty you can no longer cast spells. The same goes for Goldmoon and her Clerical Staff Spells. Raistlin’s magic spells are primarily combat oriented. Charm, Sleep, and Web are all used to temporarily stop enemies. Magic Missile and Burning Hands are attack spells. Detect Magic highlights magical items in the field with sparkles, and Detect Invisible reveals invisible objects. The Final Strike spell uses up all the energy in the staff to defeat all monsters on screen, though Raistlin loses his life in the process. To use this spell, you have to put Raistlin in the lead and also be outside of close combat range.

Goldmoon can use all Clerical spells with her Blue Crystal Staff. She has two healing spells, Cure Light Wounds and Cure Critical Wounds. Protection from Evil weakens enemies near the party, while Prayer builds the party up temporarily. Find Traps shows any traps on screen, such as falling rocks. She has two combat spells. Hold Person can disable an enemy like the Charm or Sleep spells, and Spiritual Hammer is an attack spell. Goldmoon can revive defeated party members with the Raise Dead spell. If a character is killed in combat, their body remains on the ground. You can stand near it and use Raise Dead to revive the character with a few hit points. However, if you change screens before reviving the character or cause the lead party member to fall in a pit, they are gone for good. In this case, their character portrait shows a tombstone instead of being grayed out. The last spell is Deflect Dragon Breath, which causes the lead character to glow and avoid all damage from the acid spewed by dragon hatchlings. If Goldmoon is defeated, a few other characters can pick up her staff and perform a subset of Clerical spells.

There are quite a few items found in the dungeon. There are five colors of potions that do different effects, such as healing, party member protection, or holding enemies. A ring or a gem ring can be equipped with the Use command which makes the wearer harder to hit in combat. Raistlin can use a Scroll or a Wand to perform a long range attack without using power from his staff. The remaining items have no effect except for adding points to your score while you carry them. Such items are gems, coins, gold bars, chalices, and shields.

This waterfall is awfully pretty.

This was my first time playing through AD&D: Heroes of the Lance. At the beginning of my project, I put this game and many others near the end of the list which I call my snub list. Now I am bringing those games back into the fold occasionally as I see fit, and it had been awhile since I pulled one of my snubbed games into the forefront. I’m reasonably sure I bought this game at my local game store at the time when they were slow to keep up with price increases. I could bundle games and get every fourth game free, so I took advantage of that frequently. The price of this game hasn’t really moved though. I think it was an $8 game at that store and that’s in line with its current value. I have the manual for it that I got separately, although with a missing cover.

I gave the game a test drive just to check the battery, and in those few minutes I couldn’t get off the first screen. At a glance, it is an intimidating game to say the least. There are so many menu options and character statistics. Who are all these characters and what do they bring to the table? Spell casting doesn’t work right away. The first screen features a pit that I bet most players fall in right away trying to figure out what to do. I sure did. I see I can go through a door to the north and another to the south, but my character won’t go that way because I’m just pressing Up or Down instead of holding the direction button. The game has a bad reputation for all these reasons. The manual is an absolute must, and I’m guessing most people that have tried the game played without reading the manual, further souring their first impressions. I read through the manual several times, and I needed it by my side as I played before the game started to unfold.

One of my biggest gripes with Heroes of the Lance is the level layout. The compass is there to help orient you, but from room to room it can twist in various directions. Say you are in a room that runs north and south. The next room may also run north and south, so you know you are in a different room that runs parallel. Other times, the next room runs west to east, so you then start spreading out more. To make it more confusing, if this north to south hallway has an east door and a west door opposite each other, sometimes both doors lead to the same room and other times they lead to separate rooms. Both doors leading to the same room can make sense if you picture it as two perpendicular hallways that intersect, and you are simply reorienting your view by turning 90 degrees. It’s just that this is not evident at first. Most of the hallways looks the same anyway with the same drab gray colors. All this combined is the perfect recipe for getting lost. I am good at mental mapmaking, but it only took a few screens into the game before I needed to begin drawing. Even then, I ran into problems. The layout seems nonsensical at times. Sometimes the map has loops in it, and other times it appears that you are going in a direction that overlaps with something else in the level. It’s hard enough to map the dungeon without having to consider verticality. It’s ugly, unthoughtful design.

Basic platforming is also frustrating.

The good news is that there are clear, one-way transitions between the three levels of the dungeon. Go the correct way and you may see a short cutscene of your character falling to the level below. This is not a pit that kills you and you are going the right way when this happens. If you successfully map your way to that spot, then you effectively have that level solved. It’s not always easy getting there. There is one section in Level 2 that I am convinced is impossible to map out. It’s a door maze with several hallways, all with multiple doors. I started finding new items after going through many hallways, so I know I was hitting unique screens still. Fortunately, this section is not on the critical path and can (and should) be skipped completely.

Once I reached Level 3, I was running low on magic so I elected to start over. It was quick getting back there and I was in a much better state than my first try. The final level was the easiest area to map and I did so completely. It was straightforward to beat the game at that point. It took me about four hours to beat the game the first time. I knew I could beat the game much quicker than that, so I recorded a longplay. I admit, I really enjoyed blowing through the game again once I figured it all out. The second play lasted 20 minutes. The ending of the game teases you with the sequel, AD&D Dragons of Flame, which was never released on NES. Dragons of Flame did make it to Famicom, though I won’t be playing it.

Another aspect of this game’s reputation is that it is a difficult game, but I found that really wasn’t the case. The game seems so difficult at first for all the reasons mentioned here, and that’s true, it is difficult to start. You have a lot of learn and you will probably play poorly trying to get your bearings. This makes saving anywhere such a godsend. Take advantage of it by saving frequently and reloading if things don’t go well. Don’t go too long without saving so that if you need to reload you have a better chance of remembering where you are. Mapping the game on paper goes a long way as well, even if the map itself is crude like mine. Once you find the entrance to the next level and can get there from the start, you can do what I did and restart the game if things go south. The game is short with only the three levels and it isn’t a huge setback to start over with the knowledge gained. Sadly, Heroes of the Lance will permit you into situations where the game is unwinnable and you have to start over, but this is not much of a burden as it would appear. I would say the game begins like it has well above average difficulty and then becomes a low difficulty game at the end, depending on your aptitude for mapping. Suddenly a 5/10 rating seems about right!

Make sure to protect yourself when fighting the dragon hatchlings.

I know this review has gone on long enough, but I’m going to share my tips and strategy for beating Heroes of the Lance. I’m spoiling quite a lot here. I’ll begin with perhaps my biggest revelation about this game. Most of the content in this game means nothing. Other than health, the statistics do not tell you anything. The game can be beaten with only three characters and fewer than half the spells. You need to know how to kill enemies and jump a little. That’s all. Here’s how you do it. Set Caramon as your lead character and put Raistlin and Goldmoon in the third and fourth spots in the front row. Go to the Use command to equip both Raistlin’s staff and Goldmoon’s staff so you can cast spells. Most of the enemies in this game are affected by the Web spell. When these enemies are stuck in a web, you can kill them if you want or run right past them. Web didn’t work on short enemies or the dragon hatchlings, so you have to fight them. Use only downward attacks on the short enemies. You might be able to jump past them if you want to try that. The hatchlings are the biggest nuisance here. For them, use the Deflect Dragon Breath spell so you don’t get hurt by their acid and keep reapplying it when the spell wears off for as long as you battle them. They constantly back away from you in close range, so you have to step forward and take a stab or two. Just repeat that until you either kill them or move them far enough out of the way to get where you are going. In general, monitor your health and heal with the Cure Light Wounds spell as often as needed to keep your HP topped off. Save often, as much as you feel comfortable. The Prayer spell might come in handy for a few tricky screens, but it isn’t essential. At the final battle with the dragon Khisanth, first get close enough to engage him in battle. Set Goldmoon as the lead character and press both the B button and Right to throw the staff into the dragon killing him instantly. It is that simple, and it is not even a spoiler since the manual tells you to do this. Grab the disks, wait a few seconds, and enjoy the ending.

In conclusion, yes, AD&D: Heroes of the Lance is a bad game. Poor controls, sluggish movement, drab graphics, a confusing dungeon, and frivolous, unnecessary elements make for an unpleasant experience. I haven’t mentioned the music at all, which is easily the best part of this game. The composer Seiji Toda and arranger and programmer Iku Mizutani did an excellent job with the music and they both deserve far more credit than they have received. The music aside, I would not recommend this game. If you like map making, you might get a little enjoyment here, and it’s not the worst game to play solely by walkthrough if you want to go that route. As for me, I’m really pleased I conquered the game on my own. It feels like a big accomplishment, and that is such a good feeling that makes it all worth it.

#60 – Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes of the Lance