Bomberman Live Event at Hudson Entertainment
Raise your hand if you know of Hudson Entertainment (or Hudson Software). Alright, those of you who didn’t raise your hand, check your birth certificate and tell me what year you were born. Was it before 1973? If so, how do you call yourself a gamer?!?
Hudson Entertainment has been making games since at least 1983. In that time they have made loads of games that you all have probably heard of. Remember Bomberman? Remember Bonk? Remember the Turbo-Grafix 16? Hudson was involved in them all. It may seem that Hudson has been in hibernation for the last several years, but that’s definitely not the case. They have been working hard at making games for just about every gaming system. They’ve released DS titles, Wii titles and are poised and ready to release Bomberman Live as a Microsoft Xbox Live downloadable title.
On June 14, 2007, I attended the Bomberman Live Event in the Bay area offices of Hudson Entertainment. While I somewhat expected the typical game day event of speakers telling us all about the new titles, I was very pleasantly surprised by what I experienced.
When I made it to Hudson I was given a Bomberman T-shirt and refreshments (yes, those kind). We were all rounded into a conference room where we watched a video on how Bomberman was made. I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard in a while. While Hudson takes their job seriously, they realize that gaming is all about having fun. The video was hilarious. When it was done we were invited outside for a BBQ and a live band.
After filling our bellies and enjoying some live music, we headed back inside to get our hands on Bomberman Live. Those of you who have been around gaming for any amount of years will have either heard of Bomberman, have played it or have owned it for one or more different systems. Those of you who have played any of the prior iterations can think of Bomberman Live as containing the best aspects of all of the prior versions.
For those of you who haven’t played the basic object of the game is to place bombs on a simple 2D map in order to blow up your opponents. Sounds simple enough right? Well throw in 7 other players, loads of power ups, dozens of maps and modes and customization up the wazoo and you’ve got the makings for hours of fun.
So what would you like to customize first? Lets start with your Bomberman character. Your character can be customized by changing hats, faces and body types. You can mix and match any of them. And yes, the cigar smoking Bomberman was wearing a tutu.
To add another twist to character customization, power ups are dropped into games that add new costume options. Grab all 60 different costume options for an achievement and show the Live community your pwn4ge skills!
Once you’ve customized your character, you can decide if you want to play locally with up to 4 friends (and another 4 cpu characters), or on Xbox Live. Or you might check out one of the 20 different Live leaderboards and see how you stack up against all the other gamers out there who are bombing things. You might also want to download some content. And yes, Hudson has plans to release downloadable content in the future. They’re shooting for another 3 add-on packs and are discussing purchase options that are very appealing in terms of price. Hopefully that holds up.
Once you’ve decided how you want to play (locally or on Live), you can then customize every aspect of your Bomberman experience. Begin with Classic and decide if you want normal, Paint bomb, Zombie, or Bombing run. Each mode offers a different set of variants. Normal is your old school, last person standing Bomberman game. In Paint bomb you all try to have the most squares painted in your color at the end of the game. Zombie is a variant of paint bomb where everyone is immortal – gameplay is frantic! Bombing run has you maxed out in speed and bombing capabilities – see how long you can last.
If you have had enough of classic, you can switch over to lost world. In this mode quicksand will appear and grab you where you stand. Be careful not to get caught sitting next to a bomb. In this mode you have Arena (Classic Bomberman), Zombie, Paint Bomb, and Normal (no arena).
Then you can move on to Ghost Town. In the Arena mode trap doors open and you will get burned. Zombie, Paint bomb and normal are also offered.
Thin Ice offers ice cracks that will trip you up in addition to the Zombie, Paint bomb and normal.
Big Top offers kick arrows that allow you to kick your bombs into other players. Time it right and take them out before they know what hit them.
Plunder Isle is one of my favorites. This mode offers you the ability to start inside or outside the booty. Yes, I said booty. If you start outside you must bomb your way inside to get to the powerups. Usually the first person in grabs them all (or as many as possible) and flies around the map placing massive bombs in the hopes of taking out the opponents. But sometimes you get caught up in your own bombs and that sucks!!
Spaced out offers transportation devices in arena mode in addition to zombie, paint bomb and normal. Man, these suckers had me bouncing around the map so randomly I couldn’t figure out where I was. You really have to pay attention or you will get smoked really fast.
Blast has mine holes all over the place that stop you but don’t stop the bomb blasts. Don’t try to hide behind them or you will die. I made that mistake far too many times!!
If you like being surprised, choose random and try them all!
The customization doesn’t stop when you choose what mode you want to play. From there you can change the time limit of the game, the number of wins needed to win the match, the positions where the bombers start, whether scavenger is on or off (killed Bombermen drop their power ups for you), whether revenge is on, off or super (once you die you can bomb people from the sideline to get back in the action), and whether sudden death is on, off or random (the last 30 seconds blocks reign from the sky and you either avoid them or die).
Once you’ve chosen your customized options, you can continue to customize by choosing the power up settings, power down settings, the skull settings and the individual power ups or downs you want in your match. The variants you can set up are incredible which will lead to hours of gameplay!
Once you have found your favorite settings you can save them and call them up whenever you want. I looked all around for a “Hogs n ‘Specs” mode, but I couldn’t find it!
Alright so there are loads of customizable options, but does that translate into a fun game? In a word, yes. Bomberman Live is everything you have always loved about Bombermans in one sweet package. For those of you who haven’t played before, you will love the multiplayer aspect and the party-gameness (yes, that’s a word) of Bomberman Live. The gameplay is frantic and the opportunity for smack talking abounds. Hudson is shooting for 800 points for Bomberman Live and it will be worth every penny.
The achievements are designed to be as fun as the environment at Hudson. One of the achievements (its good to be a girl I believe) can only be earned by playing as a girl character and beating an entirely other girl team. Other achievements have you dressing as a cowboy and beating another cowboy. The achievements will be as fun to earn as Bomberman is to play.
Click Here to see all the photos
I have nothing but positive things to say about Hudson Entertainment and Bomberman Live. The people at Hudson are gamers at heart and know what gaming is all about
: fun. They have fun while working and know how to enjoy themselves. After all, if you can't have fun, why game?
I'm looking forward to Bomberman's release and hope to play for hours with PGL members in the future.
Now that I've had a minute or two to throw together some quick video footage, I figured I would share it with you all. Enjoy the guest appearance too!
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Now that I have had a chance to digest and get some sleep I also wanted to let you know about the tourney we had. Hudson had some sweet swag up for grabs so we had a Bomberman tourney. We started out with 16 players. Four teams of 4 players each. From each of these the top person advanced to the final round of 4 players.
Having sucked my way thru the game for most of the day I almost didn't enter, but decided to give it a shot anyway. Well I almost made it to the final round. But since it wasn't horseshoes or hand grenades, my 2nd place finish in the first heat didn't do anything for me but give me a sense of accomplishment and a belief that my bomberman prowess actually increased during that day. The initial rounds were set to first to score 3 points. I only scored 2 points.
The final round was intense. The winning score was bumped to 5 and the final contestants settled in for the show. We had a conference room full of people all fixated on a huge (65" or more) Samsung display. The round started out with one of the players taking a huge lead of 3. The other gamers fought their way back and it ended up at around 4, 3, 3, 0. The last place gamer wasn't done yet.
He went on a huge run of 4 points to get to the top. Several times the rounds ended in draws and the match continued. Towards the end each of the gamers tied it up at 4 and we went into sudden death.
The feeling in the room was electric. Everyone was on the edge of their seat watching the gamers lob bombs through walls and across the map. These guys were doing things I had never seen before and which I likely won't be able to emulate in years!
A couple of draw rounds led to an even more palpable charge in the room. It all came down to one round.
When the dust settled the gamer who was in last place with zero points ended up winning! He scored some sweet swag and the rest of us in the room could finally breath again!
I haven't experienced that kind of gaming fun in a social setting in years. I think Hudson nailed it with Bomberman Live and can't wait to play with all of you when it is released.
I'll also be giving away a Bomberman shirt here later this week (the week of the 18th of June) so look for that contest soon.
looks like it was a blast man
