
You are rewarded for nicely playing a round with complementary gifts, like pieces of sushi that can give you a rough idea of how well you've performed.

Some matches will ask that you plant only two bombs to take out both opponents, while others will ask that you plant explosives in the four corners. To get to the higher ranks, you'll need to follow some strict guidelines for victory. Plus, each match type has numerous attractive courses against an interesting cast of opponents.

The single-player game does remain fun for a good while, however, in that there are four possible winning rankings that can be achieved through each course. As the story would imply, there is no single-player quest game per se, merely a collection of CPU-controlled opponents with objectives that can be cleared whenever playing online isn't a possibility or whenever three friends aren't around. Bomberman is apparently a master of the martial arts nowadays and must compete in a diverse array of match types, against enemies who are masters of their chosen discipline, to win the coveted gold medal at the Bomb-A-Lympics. Bomberman and his foes are rendered with a cel-shading technique, while the bits of the world you can see during the prefight scenes are colorful and equally attractive. The story elements introduced in this latest Bomberman game are attractive, dramatically styled pieces that have a pretty animelike feel to them. With the addition of online play, Bomberman Online takes an old standard and makes it feel at least somewhat fresh again. Built around four-player matches, Bomberman games have strived to find the perfect balance between playability, depth, and simple fun.

Blowing up destructible terrain can reveal power-ups that bestow numerous effects, like adding more punch to your explosions or speeding you up. Bombs can be planted and then kicked, hopefully into the path of an enemy Bomberman. If you're not already intimately familiar with what makes up a Bomberman game, it is generally a top-down battle game, in which four players armed with explosives duke it out on a grid. Sega's Bomberman Online, one of the last Dreamcast games to be released in the US, takes the quintessential party game to the realm of network play.
