I really like the 1-life rule going forward but the whole unintentional door bombing thing is still kind of a grey area to me. You are still rewarded with points for bombing the doors and over the course of 50 levels those points could possibly make a big difference vs someone who didn't bomb the doors at all. I think it should be a definitive yes or no... meaning we either allow the bombing of the doors at will or not at all (bombing of the doors would end the attempt like a death.) Just my thoughts... and sorry if I come off sounding like the fun police.

I think if you bomb a door, your game is "over" and you should suicide. End of story.

Yeah, or just pause the screen when it happens so its clear to see the extra enemies spawned and take your picture. 

On the one hand, it's pretty easy to accidentally bomb the door since you really have no idea where it is until you find it, so it seems a little unfair to have that bit of randomness dictate the end of a run.

On the other hand, I find Bomberman to not really be much of a puzzle game (as it is categorized for the contest) and adding a restriction against accidental door-bombing should encourage more strategic bomb placement and restore some of the missing puzzle element.

Having said that, I would be okay with forbidding door bombing altogether. I mean, you should be careful with explosives, right?

I'm all for this, that would be key to the whole strategy at a certain point.

Score updated...

 

Okay so thats my score which is stuck in limbo. I haven't died yet and my nintendo is paused at the moment with the tv turned off! Lol

You should just keep going, then you'll have a score either way!

I disagree that it is AT ALL "easy" to accidentally bomb the door.

It would take really sloppy play to do it unintentionally, at least in my experience from playing the game this week (I'd say 50 levels and no accidental door bombings is a decent data point )



I figured the "puzzle element" was getting combo kills.

As I mentioned before, if someone accidentally bombs the door, that will be okay. Just don't make a habit out of it. Basically, I don't anyone to spam bomb the doors to inflate their scores.

BOOO!!!

Seriously, the rest of the discussion seems to point out that the potential benefit of that type of "accident", means it should be a game-ending event.  
(especially since' we've simplified it to a 1-life contest)

Rules changed eh? Hope I have time to go through this again on the weekend.

X2

Oh well, I guess we're gonna have to keep the training wheels on for this week! ;P.  I really did like playing to avoid the doors at all costs though... To me, it made the game much more interesting. 

I'll give you a good example of when I accidentally bombed the door.  If I had an enemy trapped in bricks that I wanted to get rid of by itself, I would set up a trap.  I set one bomb to blow up vertical to break a brick to free it, and the other bomb to blow up horizontal to kill it, or vice versa.  I purposely put the bombs out of each other's path so that I can control both individually with the detonator and that way the enemy basically has no chance to escape.  Now, if the brick I blow up with the first bomb is hiding the door, that second bomb can be right in the path of the door and at that point I have no choice but to blow it up.

I hope that makes sense because that's difficult to explain without pictures.

I guess my question would be is it actually necessary to kill the spawned enemies to progress?
Or are they just "extras"?


I think that particular situation would be pretty rare and unlucky, though, and there are guaranteed "safe" ways to lay your bombs that you'd get the same effect without risking hitting a door that appeared unexpectedly.

I would need to test this out to verify, but I think the answer is sometimes.

What I think happens is that defeating the last enemy in the room sets a flag to open the door.  (It makes that nice little chime when you do.)  I am pretty sure that I exited a stage with enemies on screen because I accidentally spawned enemies after the room was already empty.  (I guess I was super careless with bombs the other night!)  If there are already enemies around when you bomb the door you would have to defeat all of them first.

---

Oh, and yes, it's definitely possible to be more careful with bombs to avoid bombing the door, I agree.

20,229,500

No deaths, bombed 2 doors by accident. Took me just under 3 hours. (This score is totally beatable too.).

ARGH, what do you guys want?  First people are saying it's not fair to lose an attempt by accidentally bombing a door and now you guys are saying you want door bombing forbidden even if it's an accident.  Make up your minds because I'm starting to get frustrated.  Sorry if I'm sounding harsh, but I've altered the rules three times this week so far.

I agree that there's a lot of contradictions surrounding the part about bombing the door by accident or/and to intentionally press points. I'd say, just try to play fair as much as you can and take this week contest flaws with a grain of salt. There's still huge chances that the best scores will be made by the best Bomberman players anyway.

Just follow this line of thinking :

1 : If you know where the door is, try not to reveal it until you can exit the stage.

2 : If you do it by accident, try to clear the stage as much as you can.

3 : If 2 happened, and you're really stuck and have serious trouble clearing the stage quick, give up and die.

Thats where I'm at... Don't stress Bimmy,  I'm cool with whatever the rules are. I was only able to make the determination of the door bombing being a potential issue after playing a few times though.

Need to get a picture tomorrow (or maybe later tonight), but I cracked 23 million on a completion (no accidental door bombings )

If you were good enough to go the whole game without fireproofing (it shows up first in level 30 or 31, i think) you could get another 2 million, easy.
Also, the ?'s are worth around 2.5 mil or so, if you do it right.

I think the major points I missed were not realizing that the bombs and firepower only spawn relatively low scoring enemies when hit, so it would have been worth picking up maybe 2 more bombs and another fireball to have better scoring potential in the bonus rounds. (I only had 4 bombs and 4 fireballs, I think -- kills your combo potential on the open field of combat versus having a longer reach and 6 bombs, or so)



(also, I guess the lives are based on level-completion and not score -- makes me wonder how many times those billion-point scores took on TG... and how long they took... )

Does the game get tougher on subsequent loops?  I have a hard time believing it could get meaningfully more difficult if you're able to maintain your fireproofing.  As long as you don't get stuck in a wall without a place to drop a bomb, there is no reason to die, ever, once you have it.

Whew! I liked Bomberman as a kid, so there's no surprise that I liked this game. I wasn't too rusty after a few tries . The only complaints I have are that the game's too long and easy (especially with the fireproof vest). Oh well, Hudson Soft was awesome
Here are my tips:

1.Bomb any powerups you already have, but only after clearing the screen of enemies. I think that makes more enemies spawn (Which should be logical from a programmer's point of view given the sprite limitations of the NES and this game probably using 8x8 sprites) when there are no enemies left on the screen

2.Always get bomb/Fire powerups. They're bound to be useful on the later bonus stages where you can get a million points easily with a chain reaction.

That's all. Here's my final score - 33131700

NICE.

Yeah, I noticed much smaller rewards when I nuked power-ups with on-screen enemies present.
Your explanation absolutely makes sense, too.



I guess I may give it one more try where I don't blow up the bombs/firepowers, and am more careful about waiting until the end of a level to kill the other types of powerups.

Is there a practical maximum to bomb count and fireball radius?

I don't think so. Again, from a programmer's standpoint, the bombs/fire are part of the background and the blast radius/number of bombs is just a variable that the game increments each time you get a powerup, so no sprite limits there, unlike the enemies (don't forget about Bomberman himself and the sprite zero at the top right corner (The little "1" between the status bar and the playfield)).