In order to stop the Hige Hige Bandits, Bomberman must proceed to the asteroid known as the Dark Star to disable each engine on it. There are 4 worlds, which 6 stages in each. At the end of each world, you disable one engine. The worlds all have various themes, as is typical of Bomberman games. The levels are kind of interesting, but nothing particularly unique. The environments sometime seem arbitrary, but if you don’t think too much, it doesn’t matter that it may not make sense. The design is good enough you don’t find yourself backtracking too often, and the various puzzles and traps stay pretty fresh. When playing this game, I did find over thinking to be a problem. The difficulty isn’t that high, but as I over-complicated things in my head, the levels felt a little harder than they really were. There is a mild level of thinking required to get by each stage, or to find hidden items, but most people shouldn’t be overly challenged with Jetters.

     Through Bomberman Jetters there are quite a few bosses. These fights aren’t terribly interesting, nor are they terribly complicated. You really just have to get close to the enemy and drop a bomb, then run for cover, and repeat. Sometimes it’s more an issue of making the enemy walk into a bomb by knowing where they will go. There are a few things that can be done to mix it up a bit. Throwing, and kicking bombs toward the enemy can keep some distance. You can also charge up the bomb by holding down the button. It’ll result in a bigger bomb with more fire power. The game also features elemental bombs, which can be acquired by finding hidden items throughout levels, and going to the bomb creation stations. The items and stations can sometimes be hard to find though, or require a special item to get to in the first place. This can result in a backtracking nightmare, and is kind of annoying actually. Elemental bombs are not required to finish the game though, so it isn’t that big a deal.

     Another major aspect of the game is charaboms. Charaboms have been in the Bomberman universe for a while now, and some may be familiar with them. They are basically little animal-esque critters that aid you in your quest. Some raise stats, while others give new abilities to Bomberman. Charaboms don’t come at full power though. Throughout Jetters, you collect fruit to level them up. Obviously it’s a bit of a Pokemon rip-off, but they are a part of the Bomberman universe, regardless of how tasteless it seems. Despite the whole “Pokemon rip-off” thing, charaboms are actually pretty useful. The secondary character, however, is not useful. They don’t tell you too much about Max, but they kind of imply he is a former villain. At any time in the game you can change to Max. The differences between Max and Bomberman are few. Max has no access to charabom abilities, but instead has an all-screen flash bomb. It’s weak, and requires a lot of time to charge up. It will usually clear a screen of enemies, as most of the lesser enemies are weak as well. Although Max feels like he doesn’t belong in the game, they force you to acknowledge his existence by having special doors only he can remove. This is rather annoying just due to how long the special attack takes to charge up.

     While the one player mode isn’t the greatest, the multi-player game is something a lot of gamers know quite well. There are quite a few multi-player modes, but most will be jumping straight to standard battle mode. This mode is more or less the old-style Bomberman game, but in the new graphics. The rules for this mode are extremely customizable. I’m actually very shocked by just how many options there are. This mode is basically the game that created the hardcore fan base Bomberman has today. A lot of people very well may purchase this title just for this. 4 players, lots of weapons, and no need for split screen. With simplicity like this, it works better than a lot of other multi-player games.

     There are some problems with the games over-all quality. Most of this game feels borrowed from Bomberman Generation, which wasn’t a Grade A title to begin with. The graphics are dated during the launch of the Gamecube. Today they just feel lazy. I’d guess Hudson wasn’t even trying to make it look good. The characters aren’t original either. They all feel borrowed from other (more popular) games. The soundtrack has the same problem. It sounds like no one was really trying to make it sound enjoyable. It’s closer to background noise than to music. Think elevator music meets video gaming. You will get sick of it if you are forced to listen for too long. The voice acting is another story completely. It’s not just annoying; you’ll question whether it’s even worth playing at times when you have to listen to the voice acting. It’s high-pitched, and squeaky. I would not be shocked if they just got random people to do the voices without care for the result. To make the issue worse, the characters constantly contact Bomberman during levels, to (attempt) to provide tips and information. The problem with it is that the “information” is useless jabber. “There are badguys in levels” … “I think there may be items” … “Badguys are bad! Don’t die!” … After two or three of these within the first 40 or 50 seconds to a level, and you’ll kind of wonder why Hudson wanted to add new characters for Bomberman to interact with. You would think Hudson could be bothered to fix these things before shipping it. Adding insult to injury is the insane load-times throughout the game. You will get very sick of seeing the loading screen.

     Unfortunately, Bomberman Jetters just does not stand up against the competition. The flat-out laziness that went into it shows and the game just isn’t extremely entertaining. The multi-player mode is kind of cool, and the $20 price tag is incentive. Even so, there are much better $20-30 games on the market for most consoles. At the end of the day, the game is still less than mediocre, and no price can fix that.