Super Bomberman R Online - a 64-player battle royale spin on the classic series - will soon be waving goodbye to Stadia exclusivity and launching on PC and consoles as a free-to-play game.

Super Bomberman R Online is, as its name somewhat implies, a pared back version of Konami's 2017 effort Super Bomberman R. This updated version, which initially launched as a timed Stadia exclusive last August, jettisons the original's story campaign and various multiplayer bits in favour of a single, online-only 64-player battle mode, imaginatively titled Battle 64.

Each Battle 64 match begins by dropping participants (who can select from various characters and customisation options beforehand) into one of 16 battle arenas.

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You know how this whole pandemic has been a terrifying voyage of discovery in terms of what's important to you? It might be that you discovered the local cafe round the corner was actually a massive highlight of your day in normal circumstances, or that despite moaning frequently, you actually did love going to the gym. It might simply be that you vastly underestimated how nice it was to pop into your local Tesco without having to queue up for an hour first. One thing I've learned is that I miss Bomberman. It's an absurd realisation. Right up there with my failed efforts to make good arancini, because I really miss good arancini.

See, Bomberman is the great leveller with me and a good friend. Super Bomberman R on the Xbox One, to be exact. He probably won't mind me saying but I'm better than him at Street Fighter and Mario Kart. It's solely down to me spending more time than him playing games, but it's a bit awkward when things become so one-sided. When it comes to Bomberman, though, we're both equally not very good. Neither of us had played it before so we came to it as a 'new' thing, immediately picking the co-op mode so we could work together at defeating the nefarious AI. As we were so rubbish at it, we'd keep the AI set to easy and simply enjoy the absurdness of the game.

Our lack of ability would often lead to a fantastic amount of chaos. Bomberman isn't a complex game but my word, do you have to keep an eye on a lot of different things. We'd find ourselves getting louder as one of us would suggest trying to pin an enemy player in a corner so we could blow them up. Invariably, cheeky comments would emerge and every once in a while, one of us would accidentally blow the other up by mistake (usually my fault, to be fair). That led to more laughter, more cheeky comments, more simply enjoying the mindlessness of it all. Every once in a while, an enemy would take one of us out and the other would vow revenge or exclaim a theatrical 'Noooooo!' after it happened.

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Here's a turn-up for the books: Konami has got David Hayter to voice Snake again - in Bomberman.

A new patch for Super Bomberman R adds a raft of new Konami characters, such as Raiden Bomber, Bill Bomber, Lance Bomber, Vic Viper ZERO Bomber, Ayako Katagiri Bomber and Ebisumaru Bomber.

But it's the addition of both Naked Snake and Solid Snake Bomber we're most interested in, because they're both voiced by David Hayter, the original voice behind Snake. You can hear Hayter's familiar tones in the video below (also note the new Mother Base stage, which looks pretty cool!).

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