Filled with intrepidation, you run down the corridor subconsciously
giving the occasional glance either side. You missed that last one
by the narrowest of margins, and you're not sure how much longer you
can last against the superior wit of the opponent. For one short
moment you think you've outwitted him. You run towards the weapon
you know is waiting for you at the end of this junction. Your
supreme confidence makes you completely oblivious to the faint
ticking sound. Suddenly, you feel the flame roar across your face,
and in the dying moments you see him step out, a sly grin on his
face. As you descend into a pool of your own blood there is one
thought on your mind: "There goes my place on the leaderboard" Some grim vision of a "Running Man" style future? A fight to the
death? No. A Bomberman clone. Before you groan, and hit that
ever-so welcoming Back button, this one's different. For DynAMIte is
not your everyday run of the mill clone. It is a 100% networkable
version, with an ever-growing cult following and at least 10 Internet
servers. It used to be so simple. I would load up Miami, hit Online, check my
e-mails in YAM, and then do a once-round Amiga.Org, MooBunny, et al.
Then came DynAMIte. The poor excuse of a social life I once had is
now far behind me. This game is addictiveness defined. The only
thing I can think of that has torn me away from the international
explosive bloodbath has been the recent release of Black & White,
Peter Molyneux's oober-awaited god sim. And that meant going to
another platform! The setup is ridiculously simple, and for those of you who have not
one ounce of culture, I will briefly attempt to summarize the
intellectually-stimulating experience which is a game of Bomberman.
It's a multiplayer 2D game, where you are placed in a small arena.
In this arena there are blocks, and your main objective (allegedly)
is to plant bombs to remove all of the blocks from the arena. The
catch is, there are up to seven other players in the arena with you.
According to their nature, they are either following the good path;
blowing up the blocks, and clearing the arena floor; or the slightly
more socially unacceptable one; namely following you around with a
large amount of explosives, and a less than angelic intent.
Basically the game continues until all but one player are dead. this
is helped along the way by bonuses, which do things ranging from
increasing the blast radius of your dynamite, to giving you the
momentary control of Darth Vader's lightsaber. All good multiplayer games need a chat window, and this is on offer
in DynAMIte, and any IRC user should be confident in using it, as it
uses the standard /me /msg tags. The servers themselves are managed
through a "Global Server List", somewhat similar to modern PeeCee
Games' World Opponent Network (WON) which gives some order to the
otherwise frenetic pursuit of online gaming. The beauty of DynAMIte is its relatively low system requirements.
Although the authors suggest an 030 as bare minimum. On a
medium-sized map, with 3 or 4 players, it runs incredibly well on my
poor humble little 020 8MB AGA. Another of DynAMIte's wonderful
features is its room for expansion. This is unrivalled since Worms,
with the ability to import new sounds, maps, and graphics sets, and
the game comes with several alternatives. Playing the game has
really inspired my creative side, and I am just about finished
creating a Red Dwarf themed gfx set, and considering doing more.
This will be available from Aminet, and possibly here, in due course. Overall, if you want a good laugh, and don't mind giving up some of
your free time, I'd definitely give DynAMIte a go. It took me a long
time to even start this article, as I spent far too long doing
"research." It is in constant development, and the main website is
well-maintained and up-to-date. Matt King (Schming)
