World 2-19: Earthbound

Earthbound

~SNES 

Well, after about 30 hours I finally have Earthbound in my trophy room! And you know what? I'd totally do it again. Earthbound definitely earned it's place in my top 10, with it's odd sense of humour, interesting game mechanics, and totally catchy soundtrack. There were so many awesome quirks in this game that made it memorable and worth being in everybody's trophy room. 

Overall, the game was pretty straightforward, as it was never too hard to tell where you had to go next. I count that as a big plus, because I hate running around aimlessly with no idea what to do. There was also no shortage of save points either (another big plus). One of the interesting game mechanics mentioned earlier is that if you stay out too long, your character gets homesick (resulting in botched battles because your character is off in Lala land). And on the even more annoying side, staying out too long also results in your dad constantly pestering you to save and take a break (at least you don't have to listen to him). But by far the most useful game mechanic comes into play by sheer advancement: after you reach a certain power level, you can run into monsters to initiate a fight and one hit KO them, bypassing the fight screen entirely. This is a huge time saver, and a great way to power level. 

One feature I didn't like much was that you couldn't get rid of key items, even after using them. However, you can leave items with your sister. Unfortunately, I didn't find that out until the very end of the game, so it was pretty useless to me. I ended up ditching a lot of good items because I simply had no space to keep them, even with 4 characters that each had 14 spaces to hold items. 

For leveling, I found that the best places were after you finished each My Sanctuary location, as you could go back to the sanctuary and get a free full recovery as many times as you wish. Also, you could hunt down the monsters in the place you just finished, and they would run away from you. And if you were strong enough, you could also one hit KO them. Talk about power leveling!

Without going into spoilers here, the final boss had some very unexpected twists, and no matter how much power leveling you do (I maxed out all my characters to level 99 quite early) he is still challenging, which I thought was very cool. There's nothing worse than beating the final boss in one shot without putting any effort into it whatsoever because your characters were too strong. Earthbound managed to avoid that entirely, and I was very impressed by that.

World 2-18: Super Bomberman 5

Super Bomberman 5
~Super Famicom

Well, Hudson Soft really changed the series up this time! Now, instead of set levels and worlds, you can basically choose what stage you want to go to after you finish each level, because multiple portals open up! Of course, it's a mystery which one takes you closer to the end boss, and there are even darker portals that put you back levels as well! Again, more monsters were added for riding on, and a new powerup was added as well: bombs that follow your enemies! This power up was especially effective for trapping enemies in corners, then just waiting nearby for the bomb to blow up. I still prefer the timer bomb, but it was a neat little addition to the Bomberman power-up family. 

Overall, I managed to finish the game in about an hour after figuring out how the portals worked. I can see this game taking someone anywhere from an hour to quite a few hours if you take the wrong portals, as there are sometimes up to 21 levels in each world. The bosses were also much harder this time around. It was worth the play for me, as now I have all the Super Bomberman games in my trophy room. 

World 2-17: Super Bomberman 4

Super Bomberman 4

~Super Famicom

When I originally read that there were 5 Super Bomberman games, I didn't realize the last two were only released in Japan. Surprisingly, the version I found said it was Japanese but came in full English, so it seems there was no real reason not for it to be released in North America as well - other than the fact that it was completely unoriginal from the rest of the series. There were hardly any new ideas implemented in this game that weren't there in Super Bomberman 3. The only real differences, other than the final boss (more on that in a bit), were the addition of a few new monsters to ride on and a couple new level themes. Overall, there was nothing astounding about Super Bomberman 4.

Super Bomberman 4 was much shorter than the first 3 games, featuring only 5 worlds (each with 7 stages) and the last world was just constant boss fights. However, the method for killing the final boss was finally changed up a bit. Rather than the usual picking up bombs and hurling them at him, he changed forms, much like Smithy from Super Mario RPG. That's about as far as the originality of this game went. Overall, it wasn't a bad game, but not really a great game either.