There are few niche and utterly forgotten 32-bit games dearer to my heart than the one I’ll talk about today. But first, before I gush, let’s admire the amazing cover of the Sega Saturn version. That’s some beefy armour – I wonder who they got to pose in it?

Boom, Baby!

Blast Chamber was released in 1996 for the PlayStation (which is the version I own) and Saturn, developed by Attention to Detail and published by Activision. A demo for a DOS and Windows version did get released but not the actual game.

So, what exactly is the concept behind Blast Chamber? Well, it’s the year 2096 and having a bomb strapped to you is a sport. So claims the back of the box, so right off the bat you’re already aware this’ll be future sports shenanigans. And it’s exactly as it says on the tin. This is one of those crapsack futures where the populace craves bloodsports to help them forget their squalid lives. Blast Chamber is the hottest sport of the late 21st century.

Let’s Head Over to the Commentary Box

“Greetings, sports fans! I’m your handsome host, Brad Sportsmeister; your commentator today for this thrilling new round of Blast Chamber. As always, four players take to the field; red, blue, green, and yellow! Their names? Don’t worry about little details like that, friend! After all, they’re not going to live long enough for you to remember them!”

“There they are and we’ll put 1 minute 20 seconds on their bomb clocks. That’s right, folks, all our Blastie Buddies have handy-dandy bombs strapped to their chests! It’s a race against time to grab the ball and carry it over to one of the score zones, slam it down, and subtract precious seconds (usually fifteen!) from their bomb timers! When it gets to 0, it’s BOOM TIME, BABY! And depending on the rules of the match, they’re either instantly eliminated or lose a life. I believe back in the twentieth, they used to call that a Death Match.”

“What’s that, Jim? I should tell the folks at home about the signature mechanic of Blast Chamber? You got it!”

“The thing that puts our sport on the map, folks, is that each chamber is rotatable at the kick of a button! That’s right, you too can be the master of gravity in Blast Chamber! Give one of those green flashing arrows a good ol’ kick and the whole chamber rotates 90 degrees, sending unprepared players falling and leaving them sprawling!”

“Couple this with random powerups to give our Blastie Buddies a timely advantage, and hazards such as bounce pads, reverse gravity fields, and spikes, oh, lots of spikes. It makes a game of Blast Chamber the kind of chaotic experience that’ll have you coming back for more!”

“Okay, let’s go back to the studio for more analysis.”

A Meaty Package of Explosive Fun

There’s an awful lot to like about Blast Chamber and there is plenty to keep you going — even if you want to play it solo.

There are twenty multiplayer chambers and forty single-player ones. While you can play against CPU opponents, you can also participate in solo challenges that turn Blast Chamber into a physics-based puzzler and single-room platformer where the objective is to retrieve the ball and then get it to the exit within the lethal time limit.

It’s a welcome addition to a package that would already have been enough with just the multiplayer modes. Blast Chamber also sports a killer soundtrack with moody industrial beats and bursts of electronica that I’ve been vibing along to as I write this article. It’s no slouch in the looks department either, wielding gorgeous lighting and colourful polygonal graphics to form its cabinet projection arenas.

Critical Reception

Blast Chamber was released to above-average review scores in the high 60s and 70s but garnered much praise from critics for its original idea. Taking a look at the Wiki article about it, I see that Shawn Smith and Dan Hsu of Electronic Gaming Monthly called it “the most original game of the year” and “almost a perfect multiplayer game, like a Bomberman for the next generation.”

There is definitely room for critique with Blast Chamber; it can be easy to lose track of your little sprites in the heat of battle and there’s not much of a feeling of impact to shoving and fighting other players for control of the ball. But it’s by no means a deal breaker and I would absolutely recommend giving Blast Chamber a try.

Concluding Thoughts and a Case for Rebirth

When games like Splatoon, Fortnite, and Fall Guys burst onto the scene, my thoughts immediately turned to Blast Chamber. I wondered why its core concept of rotating hazard chambers and four players competing to survive has seemingly never been explored again. I’ve looked and can’t find anything like it, and can’t help but think this is a still as-yet untapped mine of multiplayer mayhem potential. Every time I play Blast Chamber, I scratch my head and wonder why it just vanished into the ether, never to resurface again.

So, there we go, indie game producers. If you want a hit on your hands, embrace Blast Chamber’s dark humour and nihilistic gameplay, refine its core concepts, apply some 2020s paint, and let it explode onto the scene once more.