10. bomberman jetters (+ worms reloaded)
read to the end for an additional review of worms reloaded!
i beat bomberman jetters on gamecube as a kid. then i beat it again, in 2026, but i got the true ending this time. it takes a lot to unlock the secret boss required for the true ending but i felt that by doing that i would be "completing" the game in a way that i hadn't as a kid and could therefore add it to my list of games beaten in 2026. when i played it this time i emulated it on my steam deck. i quite enjoyed this definitely not very game. there were 2 levels where it froze repeatedly, but that's more the emulator's fault.
it's a pretty game to me, especially in the first world. the soft orange and yellow landscapes, the vaguely spacey theme, the waterfalls everywhere, the glittery crystals. it all entered my brain for the first time when i still had all my baby teeth, so it's comforting for me now. the music is the main thing for me, though. it's not my favorite soundtrack by any stretch, but for my entire life at this point the music has been coming in and out of my brain like it owns the place.
one thing i don't remember is the constant blathering on from the cast of nobodies who you'd only know by watching the japan-only anime the game is loosely based on. even then, it seems a lot of character dynamics have been rewritten enough for the game to basically exist within its own canon. but i'm getting sidetracked - the dialogue. it's overbearing. someone will be like, "hm, this level has bridges," and then 5 feet in front of you is a bridge, and when you get to it 1 second later, that same someone will be like, "to cross this bridge, fucking, walk over it." it's insane.
i recall as a kid finding the boss fights incredibly tough and the levels labyrinthine and overwhelming. i must've been really bad at video games then. luckily for me, today i am really, really, remarkably good at them. i breezed through the game for the most part. and yet, the final boss remained as difficult as i recall it being all those years ago. okay, that's not true. i'm pretty sure i was stuck on it for, like, months back then. whereas here it was more of a 45 minute or so ordeal. but it still stuck out to me, mostly because even after i beat it - twice for the true ending! - i still have no idea how the hell it works, what triggers it to reveal its weak point. it's the only mystifying thing about the game's enemy encounters, which are otherwise pretty straight-forward and rudimentary, even when going for the extra challenges required, once again, for the true ending.
all that was in reference to the game's singleplayer content. the multiplayer half of the game is just bomberman but with some extra stuff. it's got these character-specific special abilities that i don't care for, but it also has a handful of different game modes and stages that all offer a fun twist on the core formula, such as the wrestling ring level, which makes all the outer walls into those rubber wrestling ropes, so you can bounce a bomb (or yourself) around the arena.
there's also a lot of fun characters in that one, too. i always liked to play as mermaid bomber, because she was the only girl in the lineup. when i was in middle school maybe a bit into early high school, my brother dated this girl for a long time. apparently she was a conservative or something, which is weird because she was...well, i don't know, but i'm pretty sure she wasn't white. alleged conservatism aside, she was nice to me. nicer than my brother, who kind of hated me at that time. eventually she moved in with us, which was a little insane if you know my mom, but when my brother was off working or hanging out with people or cheating on her or whatever, she'd play video games with me. and because bomberman was one of the few multiplayer games she grew up with, more often than not we'd play bomberman jetters. so i didn't get to be mermaid bomber then, because she would take mermaid bomber (on the logic that people with jobs get to pick their character first), and i'd default to my favorite non-mermaid bomber character in the game's roster, max. max is like if shadow the hedgehog was in bomberman.
then they broke up, for like the millionth time. i would always get annoyed at my brother when they broke up, because i figured it was probably his fault, and because she was like a version of him who didn't hate me so i felt her absence in the family unit. but as i said, they'd done this a million times, and her and i were still sending each other 8ball games, so i just assumed they'd get back together like always. i think my whole family assumed that. we all kind of thought those 2 were in it for the long haul.
anyway, one day, as expected, there was a knock at the door and there she was. she said hi to my dad and i, who were in the living room, and went right up to my brother's room. this was so unremarkable that neither of us even bothered to follow her up there or even start a conversation. then i guess my brother texted my dad or something, because my dad went up to the room and there she was, my brother's ex who used to play bomberman with me, cramming my brother's ipad into her purse. maybe he deserved to have his ipad stolen, i don't know. but my dad grabbed it from her and she left. on her way out she said "thanks a lot" to us, as if my dad was at fault for preventing a robbery from occurring in his home. that was the last time i saw her. for a few years after that, she'd come up every now and then in conversation. my sister still followed her on instagram. last i heard she's making good money now.
occasionally i try to get my friends to play bomberman with me. for a while after i moved here we were doing worms night, which involved, as i'm sure you can guess, playing a round or 2 of worms. specifically worms reloaded. i'm not counting worms reloaded as a game i finished in 2026, because there's a campaign and i didn't do it, but here's my review of worms reloaded anyway.
nobody wanted to play bomberman with me during worms night. sometimes after worms we'd play something else, but any time i suggested bomberman nobody was really feeling it. that's cool. the people just aren't super into bomberman.
worms reloaded was fun. we made a custom ruleset and a custom level, the temple of jake, named so because the first thing we did on the level editor was draw jake the dog on the right side of the map, and as we traded the mouse making adjustments and additions to the map, we tried to at least somewhat preserve jake's most identifiable features.
worms is funny. i'm very good at using the ninja rope, and very bad at doing everything else in worms. i always imagine it as this long war of attrition, where i need to hold onto my best supplies for when i'll "really need them." in the end, i end up getting all my worms killed, without ever having used my best stuff, by enemies, who are making full use of their best stuff.
one weekend came by during my big post-move depressive episode. one of my friends had been dodging worms night for a while, but this time he said he was coming! my roommates told me, maybe thinking it would pull me out of my misery. i texted him immediately, begging him to cancel again. he said he had already used up his excuses the last few nights; this one was on me. despite that, he thankfully he didn't show up, and nobody said anything. it's been a few months since then. i feel better now, sometimes, and i'm able to spend time with people again, most days, but i think i effectively killed worms night with that particular stunt. the summer's over now, too, and everyone's busy so it's not like we could easily reintroduce it.