The White Bomber, debuting in 1983, as rendered in artwork for 2017/18's Super Bomberman R. — AFP Relaxnews
First released in July 1983 and now with over 70 games in the wild, the Bomberman franchise is 35 years old in 2018.
With its traditional grid-based layout, Bomberman features a network of paths and obstacles, some destructible, and a population of monsters – or other players – preventing the player from completing each level.
A simple concept well suited to both solo play and frantic multiplayer jostles, the franchise as a whole has received over 50 entries to date following a July 1985 debut on Japanese home computers.
The original was re-released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985 then re-booted as a TurboGrafx-16 classic (later on Amiga, MS-DOS PC and Atari ST as Dyna Blaster in Europe), but the arrival of 16-bit consoles introduced a new level of visual creativity.
It's the earlier entries to the series that were the best-received, particularly the five-title Super Bomberman sub-series on Super Nintendo, with Bomberman '93 another TurboGrafx classic; Nintendo 64 and GameCube titles remain well-loved, with the trio of Bomberman Blast for the Wii, Bomberman Ultra on PS3 and Bomberman Live for Xbox Live Arcade considered a late-game return to form.
Most recently, Super Bomberman R – the first core franchise entry in seven years – debuted as a launch title for 2017's Nintendo Switch.
Received as a decent iteration for solo, co-operative and up to eight-person multiplayer use, it was then released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows PC in June 2018.
— AFP Relaxnews
