Mine Bombers

Ninety-nine percent of the games I played on a 486 back in the nineties, I played alone. Mine Bombers was that remaining one percent — and that's why my brother and I fought over the joystick because of it.

Mine Bombers from Finnish studio Skitso Productions is a 1996 multiplayer action game for DOS, where several players compete on a single screen for treasures hidden in the terrain. Genre-wise, it's a direct relative of Bomberman — top-down view, symmetrical arena, eliminating opponents and collecting bonuses. Nothing revolutionary on paper, but exactly the type of game that didn't get played for an hour at a LAN party or on one computer, but for the entire afternoon.

The game loop is simple: you move around the map, place mines, dodge explosions, collect what you can and try to survive longer than everyone else. The controls work, the explosions have a satisfying kick to them, and the game's pace naturally escalates as space on the map dwindles. The problem is that playing solo doesn't make much sense — the AI opponents are more decoration than challenge, and after a while the game without a real opponent falls apart into meaningless clicking. This is a game designed for two people at one keyboard, otherwise it'll stall halfway through.

For its time, Mine Bombers looked decent — colorful graphics, readable environments, Sound Blaster sounds that didn't kill. They didn't kill back then. Today it's purely a nostalgic thing, or historically interesting as an example of what a small studio could do in the mid-nineties without major distribution support. The gameplay has aged better than the graphics, but there's no reason to fool yourself that this is a forgotten gem.

Today Mine Bombers suits anyone looking for a quick diversion for two at one computer and doesn't want to spend an hour with setup. Run it in your browser via DOSBox in a minute, play ten rounds and close it. That's exactly how it worked in 1996 and that's exactly how it works today. It never asked for more than that back then.