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Bomberman! It's a classic formula, and pretty hard to mess up - even after 10,000 clones it's still fun and exciting. Thanks to Samar Productions we now have a new Bomberman game for the Commodore 64 and, no real surprise here, it's pretty good.

I assume we're all familiar with the Bomberman concept - run round a maze dropping bombs to blast your enemies while taking care not to blow yourself up in the process, grabbing pick-ups to give you extra bombs, bigger explosions, boots to punt your bombs down the alleys and so forth, eventually leaping into an exit square when everyone has been blown to smithereens. Basically it's a bulging sack of fun and needless to say Bomberman's new Commodore 64 incarnation delivers all the classic game-play.

The first thing that struck me about this game was how clean the graphics looked. This little Bomberman can certainly hold its head up high amongst the Bombermen from more powerful systems - the characters look so carefully and lovingly crafted, and there are so many nice graphical touches (such as the little stars which circle your character when you step into the exit square).

Playability-wise, Bomberman C64 is very slick and well put together. Game-play is fast (as it should be in a Bomberman game) and even without all the extra touches the designers threw in it would still be a decent release. It's these little extras which really improve the game, however. Like the skull pickups, for example - which either kill all the enemies on the screen, turn you into one of the little bat-winged flying baddies for a period of time, send you temporarily nuts so you keep dropping bombs as you walk or overpower your bombs so that you're caught by the blast. This really adds an element of chance to the game. Don't want to take the risk? Feel free to avoid them, but if an explosion from one of your bombs catches a skull pickup you've got a trio of those little gargoyle-dragon-bats on your hands.

Also, if you make the genius move of blowing up the exit square it'll barf out a bunch of bad guys, which is pretty unlucky if you've just cleared the maze of enemies, but it all adds to the fun. And it's more likely than you think, because the exit square has to be uncovered as you blow through walls, so that excellent combo that you set up to wipe out the last of the baddies might just reveal the exit square with one bomb and blow it up with the next.

As far as difficulty goes, the game has a pretty gentle learning curve, so that you don't really notice when levels are getting tougher. You're not rushed from a maze which was a walk in the park to one which is a jog through a meat grinder, the difficulty just ramps up ever so slightly each level, and it makes for a really pleasant experience.

You could say the music's a bit repetitive, but it's a nice little 'demoscene' style tune and while it's hardly a SID chip symphony it's certainly not bad by anyone's standards - and it's irritatingly catchy!

All in all, Bomberman C64 is a fine addition to anyone's collection, whether they're a Bomberman fanatic or entirely unfamiliar with the game. If it had a two-player option it would have been a tour de force for the C64, but as it stands it's still a very nice piece of work and certainly deserves to be played, played and played again.

82%?! Hell, if I'd reviewed this game it would have scored in the 90's. Bomberman C64 is technically outstanding, with beautiful high-res pixel work (almost 16-bit quality) whilst still maintaining the essential fast-paced game-play of the original. Also, unlike many other clones that require pixel-perfect manoeuvring (which can be very frustrating), the player character slides effortlessly around corners and it all feels really smooth.

Samar Productions have really pushed the capabilities of the old breadbin with this release and although it's only a single-player affair, the added elements mentioned in Ruari's review result in the game being up there with the best of them. With a five-player version in the works (although no planned release date), the next build of Bomberman could even beat Protovision's awesome Bomb Mania.