Online Bomberman

Not to be confused with Bomberman Online.

Bomberman Online
Developer(s)	MGAME Corp.
Publisher(s)	Wizgate Fullerton
Platform(s)	PC
Release date(s)	2004-10-28 (patch) 2005-02-03
Genre(s)	Massive Multiplayer Online Game, Party
Mode(s)	Multiplayer
System requirements Windows XP, Internet, DirectX 8.0

Online Bomberman is an online game developed by Mgame, Hudson Soft^{[citation needed]}, and Fullerton^{[citation needed]} and was released on the PC in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. As of January 2008, servers are still online only in Korea.

The Taiwan server supported Taiwan, Macau, Hong Kong regions.

Gameplay

There are four gameplay modes in Online Bomberman: 'Survival Mode', 'Panel Paint Mode', 'Hyperbomb Mode', and 'Boss Battle Mode'.

• In Survival Rule, you either battle in a team or by yourself. You must kill all opposing players in order to win.

• In Panel Paint Mode, the floor is colored. When your bomb explodes, the floor will be covered with your team color. When you die you will be revived but the area you had 'occupied' will be erased.

• In Hyperbomb Mode, there are special hyperbomb items that you have to collect in order to win. There are 5 items in total. However, you only need to collect 3 then reach the center of the room in order to win. The difficult part in this game setting is that sometimes you must choose between letting your character die or losing all of your collected items.

A screen shot of the 'Boss Battle' Mode.

• In Boss Survival Mode, the player will face a boss of his or her choice. The boss will place special bombs and hide. To combat the boss, the player can purchase items and use it for special effects.

There are 2 other buttons found in the game's data with the text 'Submarine Mode' and 'Ring Match'; the two have never taken place in the releases.

Item Shop

User Interface, server lobby.

In late 2004, Online Bomberman in Taiwan and Hong Kong opened an item shop where players could buy items for the boss battle mode including character cards and nickname cards.

Character cards are characters that require a money payment, and can only be used for a short period of time.

There are two kinds of nickname cards. One type will affect the background of the nickname display area, the other one will simply change the color of the text. Both of the items affect the player's name display.

In order to buy items, user must obtain Bomberyen. Bomberyen can be obtained through normal gameplay, by defeating bosses in Boss Survival Mode, by entering Tournaments, or by purchasing it with cash.

Item Shop also existed in the new version of the Japanese Online Bomberman, containing clothing and accessories to be used by a custom character in the game.

Closing

Victory

In early 2003, Online Bomberman in Japan was shut down. The official website stated that the game was stopped for debugging and was in development for a commercial release.

In October 2005, The Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau site announced that they were closing the websites and all the servers involved with the game. This announcement caused a wave of shock amongst many players in that region. In response, several users in the forums declared that they will attempt to clone the game and setup private servers with no moderators or administrators doing anything to stop it.

On November 1, 2005, the game went out of business in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

The Japanese version went back online on December 1, 2005, but then closed again on July 31, 2007.^[1]

References

1. ^ http://www.hudsonkingdom.jp/

External links

• Archived Japanese game site
• Korean Online Bomberman Site
• Chinese (Taiwanese) Version website through the Way-back Machine
• Bomberman Online World, maintained by Broomop and Schthack