Скачать или смотреть Bomberman Kart (PS2) - 1. White Bomber Cup

REUPLOADED DUE TO ENCODING ISSUES

You may know Bomberman for being a series of popular puzzle platformers by Hudson Soft, what you might not know is that he is the star of numerous different spin-offs - including a Kart Racing clone. There are actually multiple Bomberman sports games, though this video series will be focusing on the first PlayStation 2 entry, developed by Racjin, and localised exclusively for PAL European territories by Hudson Soft themselves (surprisingly).

Without beating around the bush for much of this write-up, Bomberman Kart really is just a Mario Kart rip-off and sadly a fairly average one at that. Don't get me wrong, it plays competently enough as a racing game: Controls feel tight and responsive, tracks are varied in their level of the challenge, and the number of different characters and karts available all feel faithful to Bomberman's brand, but it lacks that extra something which makes these sort of racers pop, and that applies to all areas of it's design. For one thing, alot of everything here is just basic: Weapons are facsimiles of what you might find in Mario Kart, with the Missile being a Green/Red shell equivalent, Bomb being equivalent to a banana peel and Homing Missile most controversially feeling like a blue shell that you can regularly pick-up. You do also have a dash and invisibility pick-up which, again, are represented in a similar manner to other Kart racers, so there isn't much to say here, they perform similar enough to what you would expect.

Perhaps the one thing that does distinguish Bomberman Kart from other Kart racers is that all of these items can be picked up regardless of where you are on the track position wise. Mario Kart infamously balances your item pick-ups depending on how far behind the pack you are, it is the game's own way of rubber-banding gameplay itself. In Bomberman Kart, you can pick up Boosts and Invisibility pick-ups, and even stack them, while in first place, provided the pick-up shows it is still on rotation. What this really ends up meaning is that you can zoom well into first place, without anyone else having a hope of catching up with you, which can maybe make it a little less fun to play in actual competitive company.

While I have no complaints about the variety of tracks, and the challenge that comes with adjusting to their various twists and turns, there are only eight visually distinct themes between stages in all. After the fourth or fifth tournament it can feel very samey too, and the tournaments are guilty of excess padding, especially by having longer race events, as these can become something of a slog as you progress further through them. Curiously, while there are unlockable characters and vehicles in Bomberman Kart, you don't earn any of these until you have beaten the very last tournament....Which happens to be a 32 Random Race event. Pain.

And really, besides that, there is not a whole lot else to say about Bomberman Kart. It is very basic looking in presentation, the menus can be fun and have the quirky personality that comes with this franchise, but actual visuals are quite basic by PlayStation 2 standards. Bomberman Kart does run comfortably enough, rarely dropping frames and atlesst having minimal flickering compared to its peers, but it conversely looks very soft on modern displays - even when forcing Progressive Scan at 576p through Xploder HDTV Player, or scaling the picture further using a RetroTink 4K.

There are a bunch of throw-away racing modes, besides the tournaments, on Bomberman Kart, but nothing that I felt the need to capture in this playthrough series. One thing these later Bomberman releases would always fall back on was the actual Bomberman Battle game itself, which Bomberman Kart certainly carries as well and presents as a separate option before gameplay. Bomberman, and it's battle game especially, will always have universal appeal, but Bomberman Kart is a pretender to a genre of which Mario rules over as king, even to this day. Truth be told, the PlayStation 2 lacked Kart racing games, generally speaking, but you did not need to look far before finding Crash Nitro Kart offered a better option on this system, and eventually Naughty Dog would outdo that too with their own Jak X Combat Racing. As it stands, Bomberman Kart is an odd curio in the Hudson Soft property, and one that surprisingly stayed outside of North America as well, but you are not missing much either-way.

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A NECESSARY EVIL:
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Any copyrighted footage I use is covered under fair use laws, or more specifically those listed under Section 30(1) of the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1989 and under section 107 of US Copyright Act 1976. This video exists purely for the purpose of research and criticism. I do not make a profit from any uploaded content, nor do I intend to. Thank you for watching.