Super Bust-A-Move

"It's addicting and very fitting for puzzle lovers..."

I haven't played much in terms of the whole Bust-A-Move series outside of a couple of titles on the original Play Station and even the arcade version of the game, but what I can say is that it really hasn't changed much since those days that I played it other than the fact that it became much brighter than I remember! Taking control of one of the lovable and rather cute looking Bubble Bobble team, you're charged with completing a myriad of puzzles that involve shooting colored bubbles up into other colored bubbles and creating a match of three or more. There is a bit of strategy involved with knocking out the different sets of puzzles in which one wrong shot can cost you the level and therefore stop you dead in your tracks!

The game play is rather simple when you boil it down to brass tacks. You take control of a crossbow looking device that is loaded with different colored bubbles in which you shoot up into the pre-set puzzle in order to clear them out! You'll run into instances where you have different types of bubbles that have various effects depending on what you hit them with and again, all it takes is one wrong move for you to end up with nothing but a continue option. There are several different modes on the other hand, that actually increase a bit of the game play, which include a one player mode that gives you three choices such as training, normal and then classic mode.

The Training mode pretty much takes you through the different stages and gives you the opportunity to learn the different angles at different points. You could consider this your practice mode, in which you are given a small tutorial on how the game plays and what the different bubbles do when they are special bubbles. Beginners to the series and even those who have played before might want to take a look at this mode, just to get re-acquainted with the game and get used to the control again!

The Normal mode is your basic mode, in which you select a character and take him or her through several different stages of the alphabet and plenty of different puzzles which are made specifically for this game! You'll find that there is increasing challenge and it'll take some time to get through the various puzzles depending on what path you decide to take. For your efforts, you're rewarded with a small ending sequence for each character and then a full score tally as well. The scoring pretty much works on a time basis, and unless you're fast with your fingers, good with your angles and can clear a stage in less than forty seconds, you're not going to end up with any type of time bonus! The puzzles range from the ridiculously easy to the head pounding difficult, but all of them can be overcome with just a little practice.

Finally you have the Classic mode, which allows you to play through all of the stages that have been named as Programmer Favorites from all of the previous Bust-A-Move games. These puzzles are literally the hardest of the bunch, but again, with enough practice you'll find that it just takes a little thought to get through and plenty of patience before you really end up with the solution.

Control wise, Bust-A-Move really isn't all that difficult to learn, although you have to be good with your angles in order to really get anywhere with the game. The different puzzles that you fact off against, will find you at a loss of trying to get the correct angle in order to get the right match! You'll find that there are four buttons that you have to rely on, with the first being the firing button, and then the analog stick in order to aim your firing mechanism. The two shoulder buttons allow you to do precision aim, but you'll find that it can be relatively useless at certain points of the game because you have a limited time to find the right spot for your bubble before it's fired automatically!

Visuals here are for the kid at heart, with bright colors, cute looking characters, and different colored bubbles to fire. If you're looking for a game that shows off supreme visual effects, then this one really isn't what you're looking for, so be prepared! The backgrounds that I've played through really do leave a good effect depending on what path you decide to take while rolling through. Some of the better ones that I've seen are the glittering star scape and the lightening effect stages. All of which aren't random, but pre-determined depending on what path you take!

Audio in BAM is for the birds. Quite frankly, I couldn't stand the music for anymore than twenty minutes and even after that, I had to shut it off! With the amount of half techno, half baby babble that was going on, heads or tails of the music were really pretty hard to recognize and it fades into the background without much of an impression. The sound effects run the same way, with different characters having different speech, but because it's in Japanese and muddled to boot, I couldn't understand what in the hell they were saying when something was going on!

BAM is a pretty good puzzle game that has some flaws. With plenty of puzzle shooting action as well as easy to learn controls, you're looking at a game that could keep you busy for a couple of months or more depending on your willing ability to watch the cute characters and listen to the drab sound! If you're looking for a Tetris style game, then you need to look elsewhere, but if you're a BAM fan, a Bubble Bobble fan, or just looking to blow thirty bucks, this title could go either way, although I recommend a rental first just to see if it's your slice of pie!

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/21/01, Updated 10/21/01