Initially published in 1997 for the original black and white Game Boy, by Hudson Soft in Japan and Nintendo worldwide, Pocket Bomberman is a scrolling platform game that incorporates elements from the famous Bomberman series. And I have to say that it works exceptionally well and makes for a very good game!

From the main menu, you can choose to play a “Normal” game or “Jump” game. The latter is basically practise for a minigame that is featured in the normal game, but more on that later. The normal game features five worlds, spanning 25 levels in total, plus a boss fight at the end of each world.

In the normal game, the aim is to jump around a series of scrolling platform levels, dropping bombs to blow up all the enemies. When all hostiles have been cleared, the exit to the next level opens and allows you to move on. Each level has a time limit to complete it.

All the power-ups from the Bomberman games are present and available, and to reveal them you have to blow up destructible blocks (that are themed, depending on the world you’re playing). Some destructible blocks can hide traps, however, and those are best left intact to reduce the risk of you losing a life if you fall onto them. There are also gates that can be opened by exploding a bomb onto their relevant switches. You can also use your own bombs as platforms to jump to out-of-reach areas, although that is best done when the bombs are in ‘remote’ mode (meaning that you have to press Select to detonate them, so they’ll stay unexploded until you actively decide to trigger them).

The aforementioned “Jump” minigame is a challenge whereby you have to guide Bomberman through either an easy, medium or hard course, and the catch is that he constantly jumps, so you must deal with that to reach the finish line. You can drop bombs in the Jump game, and can move Bomberman around, but you cannot control when he jumps. Which makes it a difficult game. And which is why Hudson Soft decided to give players the chance to practise it before encountering it in the main game.

Overall, Pocket Bomberman is a great little game. It uses passwords to allow you to start from higher levels, and the difficulty curve is well-judged. If you’re a Bomberman fan and have never played this before, I highly recommend you check it out.

Pocket Bomberman was re-made for the Game Boy Color and released as a launch title for the system the following year, in 1998.

More: Pocket Bomberman on Wikipedia