With the ongoing delays of Nintendo's Ultra 64, and Sega's floundering of the Saturn, the hot new kid at school, the Sony PlayStation, had little to no problems impressing gameheads in the mid 90's with its launch. Legit, a large part of Sony's success was due to the well-timed bone-headed mistakes of their competition. Our family picked pone up in 97, and Blast Chamber, while not a PSX exclusive, was one of the first games I ever played for it. Having had a history with Super Bomberman at this point in life, I felt some similarities. There's...a few.

Developed by defunct British studio Attention To Detail, Blast Chamber was published by Activision and released in 1996 as a techno-futuristic puzzle platformer with some multiplayer modes available. As a single player game, you traverse around 40 different cube-shaped puzzles, placing a glowing rock into a reactor before timer runs out. Wait too long, the timer runs out, and it's good night Irene. The navigate across the various hazards, like spike pits and huge industrial fans that blow you into danger, it takes some maneuvering the "chamber" around for the best possible path to safety. To its credit, this game did stand out to me at the time. this was a period where the games almost had to come packed all sorts of "EXTREEEEEME!!!!" edge to them, Blast Chamber was a little bit of an outlier. It's no surprise, however, that it may fail to hold one's attention for any longer than hour-long sessions, especially for neurotic 14 year olds who wanted to air juggle people in Tekken or blast wolves away with Lara Croft's pistols.

Blast Chamber comes off as laid back in its presentation, perhaps a little too dry for its own good. There really isn't too much to the gameplay, beyond jumping, there's not much in the way functions. The controlled character can feel a touch slippery at times and has some inconsistent eight behind his actions. Intelligent Qube, which would come out a few years later, is far more the intense puzzle game, but there can be some interesting interaction with Chamber.

Now when it comes to multiplayer, Blast Chamber comes to life a little bit, and can be quite an exciting piece of software, if you can get three other buddies involved. The two modes, Eliminator and Free-For-All, can be quite the blast (PUN INTENDED). In Eliminator, you must be the last person standing. A bomb is strapped to your character and the counter ticks down until your in possession of the crystal. You can lose control of it by falling, are pushed by another player, or you return it to a reactor to extend your time. It's essentially reverse Hot-Potato with more violence. Free-For-All plays pretty much the same as Eliminator, but it's about surviving long enough to end the event with the least deaths. 

Visually, I do hate this game. I'll cut it some slack for being early in this generation, but before the influx of proper physics and rendering, Blast Chamber can look like a mess on certain chamber stages. Credit is due for being a game that's fully rendered in 3D, but this era of video games just look really poor and doesn't retain a great deal of charm. The great contrast to Bomberman, its color palette just comes off muddy and seem to run together. 

The camera does try to swivel around to give you a decent view of the play area, but there's portions where the players on the field can run behind obstructions and you can't see a damn thing. 

While it may be a fleeting experience, Blast Chamber is a fairly competent puzzle game that could get pushed back very quickly in one's PlayStation library. Its greatest strength is in its multiplayer. Be warned, the CPU can be a cheating dickweed.