Going back to the Hudson Soft line of games, next to the Hudson Bee, Hachisuke, BomberMan may easily have been the publisher/producer's most recognized character. Super Bomberman, developed by Produce! Co. (Dual Heroes and Mystic Ark) was my introduction to the series, though it had been around a decade prior to our family getting this one for Christmas in 94. From that point, it was a long-running staple for the family, and the series still remains a property, even after Konami acquired Hudson. 

The Super line of Bomberman games were adapted from the NES, Game Boy, and arcade entries, and became its own sub-series/continuation. The premise has remained the same throughout the franchise, navigating BomberMan through puzzle-based mazes using bombs (of course) to clear your path and defeat enemies on the grid map. Acquiring power-ups like flame icons to increase the length of your blast or more bombs to drops. It's very self explanatory, easy to pick up, and can be a fairly chill game to play 

The single player campaign is co-op, which is a neat novelty to play. I never considered it all that tough, and was always killed by the chained blasts I'd create. Enemies generally just bobbed and bounced around with little signs of hostility. While they can get fairly tricky in the later stages, they're not really much in the way of being imposing barriers, they seemed to be there to give you something to clear in order to proceed. This was one of the games I remember where friendly fire was something to stay abreast about when doing two-player. 

Multiplayer is where Super BomberMan shines. If you have a SNES MultiTap peripheral, you can get up to four players, there's a chance a Battle Mode session can go on for hours. The field is littered with power-ups and poisons, while your opponents' bombs permeate all of the space, as the time goes under a minute. Once that happens, the walls close in on the surviving players until the battle area is 9x7. THIS is where the elite skills are tested, as for the next 30 seconds, it's sudden death or DRAW. It was remarkable how heated this got.

There's been many a case where playing like an asshole is the key. Mostly why the kick power-up and boxing glove were my favorite weapons; if someone attempted to trap me, I'd boot the bomb back to the other side of the stage, or punch it over the wall and catch them running from the other side. While the other battle stages provided different environmental variables, the grey brick stage remains god tier, in my opinion, as it has been a staple of the series' Battle Mode since its inception. 

Honestly, there isn't much else to say about Super BomberMan. It's a very basic game that has a ton of replay value. The graphics are bright and colorful, with the bosses being huge and detailed. The maps each have a unique pop to them, and the music, while not as catchy as other future BomberMan entries, often gets stuck in my head.

The control scheme doesn't make use of the SNES' plethora of buttons, but it doesn't need to. It's responsive, fast-paced, and there's little drag or slowdown when it matters. The games from this point and beyond would begin experimenting with different play mechanics, new weapons, and more opponents in Battle Mode, but Super BomberMan can be quite the time killer.