Released in 1999, Bomberman 64: The Second Attack arrived late in the Nintendo 64's life, when publishers were already looking toward the next hardware generation. Its North American release was handled by the small publisher Vatical Entertainment in limited quantities, and that scarcity is a large part of why the cartridge became one of the pricier N64 collectables in later years.

What separates it from standard Bomberman is how much weight it puts on the single-player campaign. You work through a sequence of themed worlds, and the plain bomb is joined by elemental variants - fire, ice, wind and others - that behave differently and are used to solve environmental obstacles as much as to destroy enemies. Companion creatures that you raise and improve over the course of the game add a light progression layer, nudging the classic arcade loop toward something closer to an adventure.

The multiplayer battle mode is still present, and it remains the reason the series endures: an enclosed arena, chain explosions, and the unforgiving rule that a badly timed retreat kills you with your own bomb. The overhead perspective keeps the whole board readable, though the move into 3D space occasionally makes distances harder to judge - a problem shared by most series that made the same jump in this era.

Taken as a whole, this is a game more interesting for its structure than its technology. If your reference point is 8-bit Bomberman, the campaign here will feel unusually substantial and deliberately paced. If what you actually want is four people around one television trading explosions, the earlier entries in the series still do that job just as well.