Category: Diary

Just worked my way through World 2 on this. Not that it took very long, although the boss at the end was a bit of a pain. Luckily, my ball got trapped between its head and the wall on my third attempt, and it died pretty quickly.

I hadn’t realised that you could play multiplayer mode on your own, and have bots make up the rest of the players, until Tim Miller mentioned it in uk.games.video.handheld today. So I did a bit o’that. And very good it is too – especially the mode where there are a billion powerups available right at the start.

More play on this. Managed to complete the other Star Trip “levels”, and finished more trials and stuff. Played “simple” mode for a while too, against three CPU players – mainly to gain Meteos to fuse in the Fusion section.

I completed the first Star Trip mode today. It was actually pretty easy. Also played some of the Deluge and timed modes, but didn’t get any particularly impressive scores. Found an option called “Fusion”, which seems to let me create new planets and Meteos and sound test things and stuff, so I did some of them too.

The US version of this DS puzzle game arrived from Videogamesplus this morning – just in time for me to take it away to a conference with me. Played it a little this evening. BEST EVAAR. Hectic, frantic, spastic, fantastic, arsenic and other words ending with “ic”. It is sort of like Columns, only a bit more like Zoo Keeper. Only not like either. And it has rockets. But it is very good.

Played a bit more on this this evening. Mainly had a go at the challenges, but didn’t get very far. I have completed all three cat racing levels though. Had a few online games against the Retro Gamer forums people – one hit kills with only baseball bats and bricks as weapons. Excellent. Even though I was crap and came last.

Spent a couple of hours on this today. I completed the “pre-mission mission”, and also the first proper mission in the castle thing. It all seems much like Timesplitters 2 so far. I failed the mission with Harry Tipper, though. I don’t understand how Cortez doesn’t know who he is, even though he met him in TS2. Very odd. I died once I’d set the water running, and didn’t realise that people would then see through my disguise and try …

What a shock! There was an Ice World, a Lava World and a Castle World! I must be psychic or something. And then there was a Crystal World, with the most irritating baddies in the world EVAR in it – giant bomb creatures that explode themselves (but don’t die). On the one hand, they’re great as they wipe out some of the other baddies by themselves. On the other hand, they tend to sit next to the exit and blow …

World 5-5 now. Looks as though all the game stereotypical stages are in this one – Desert World, Grass World, Forest World, etc. Ice World is up next, I think, and then Lava World. There’s bound to be a castle at some point too. I have racked up so many powerups now that it is just silly. I have over 60 bombs I can activate, should I die, but I’m sticking to four at a time for the moment. I …

More playage, and I’m up to World 4-5 now. It’s still fun, but there isn’t much difference between all the levels. They do occasionally throw in a single screen, filled with blocks, and you have to clear the baddies in under 90 seconds, which breaks it up a bit. Not much else though.

Yes, just plain “Bomberman” – the DS version, mind, but it’s still simply called “Bomberman”. Keeping in with this simple name, the game itself has shed much of the excess baggage from over the years. There are no kangaroos and no minecarts. Most of the powerups are still here, but many of them are only “active” for the level you’re currently on. The levels are much more like those on the original Bomberman games too – blocks to blow up, …