Bombermaaan

Blow up your opponents for victory

Versions of Bomberman have been around for over two decades, making it one of the longest running forms of computer game of all time. Bombermaaan is one of the most famous versions with the simple graphics, space suited bomber man and flamed bombs making it a visually appealing yet easy game to play.

Gameplay

The basic premise of Bombermaaan is simple: blow up your opponents. In the early levels, there's little in the way of obstacles, meaning that it's all about timing your bombs and avoiding the flames from your opponent's weapons. However, as the levels get harder, there are bricks to hide behind, blocks to blow up and power ups to collect to change the game and increase the challenge.

Power Ups

What stands Bombermaaan apart from the other versions of the game is the simplicity of the power ups. Later games have so many that you can easily lose track of what you've got, whilst Bombermaaan has four main ones:

• Super speed - this is incremental, meaning that the more of these power ups you get, the faster you end up going. As with all the Bombermaaan power ups, they can be a curse as well as a blessing, as going too fast makes it hard to concentrate on what your opponents are doing.

• Kick - this power allows you to "kick" or push a bomb out of the way. It's very useful to trap your opponents, but every Bombermaaan player has had the odd game where you end up blocking yourself in or running to kick a bomb that explodes as you touch it.

• Extra bombs - the only thing better than being able to lay two bombs at a time is being able to lay three bombs or even more. The more bombs you have, the easier it is to surround your opponents, but it's also easy to not pay attention or get carried away and not leave any hiding places from your own explosions.

• Longer flames - Bombermaaan bombs send out deadly flames horizontally and vertically, and the longer flame power up extends this by one square with each power up. Experienced players will count how many they've collected, and there's something satisfying about standing out in the open watching the flames reach the next square to you without getting burned.

Strategies

The most common Bombermaaan strategy is to play quickly, running around and dropping as many bombs as possible. Not only is this fun to do, but it causes chaos for your opponents and makes it hard for them to track you down. However, more experienced players will move slowly, calculating the position of each bomb and using their power ups for defensive rather than offensive purposes.

In the multi-player games, you only get a point for being the last man standing, so it often pays to hide away and let your opponents do your dirty work for you until it's time to fight maaano for the point for that round.

Pros

• Fun to play with friends
• Simple controls
• Lots of layers of strategy

Cons

• Poor graphics
• Limited number of levels
• Rubbish computer AI players