Bust-A-Move '99

"Puzzle games have never seemed less serious"

The Bust a Move series, or Puzzle Bobble in Japan, has had an interesting history with regards to it’s U.S. release dates. This game, Bust a Move 99, is actually the third game in the series, but Acclaim released it here after Natsume released the fourth game here. Since they can’t very well release 3 after 4, they redubbed it 99, and people who didn’t know what was happening with the license (probably nearly everyone who wasn’t a fanatical fan of the series) presumed 99 was the newer game. Now, I can’t speak much for 4, having not owned it, but Bust a Move 99 is a fine piece of puzzle game software that I’m glad to have purchased.

Puzzle games aren’t renowned for their storylines, but we have one here anyway to tie everything together. Hyper Drunk, who the manual calls DUNK, casts a spell that sends 8 characters from different game worlds to one place. They’re one strange lot, to say the least. Bubbaloon (or just Bub) is the little green bubble spitting dinosaur we know and love from Bubble Bobble. Pretitto is a little doll from a UFO prize grabber game. Twinkle is a cute lady quiz game mascot with a jesters cap. Musashi is a parody of Ryu from the Street Fighter series. Marina is the scantily clad hostess of a Mahjong game. Luna is the inhabitant of a fortune teller machine, which isn’t really a game but what the heck, why not? SSB is apparently another Capcom parody, this one of Captain Commando. Finally, Jack is from a card game, and bears a passing resemblance in terms of outfit to SNK’s King. It’s your task to choose your champion from this group and send him or her back home sweet home.

This very charitable task is accomplished by taking on the other characters (including a mirror version of the one you choose) and some bosses in puzzle battles. Each character has the exact same play field filled with bubbles of many colors. You have to aim and shoot more bubbles at them to match at least 3 of the same color. Doing so makes them disappear. If you match more than 3 bubbles, or can make bubbles connected to the ones you burst drop, then you have effectively attacked your opponent. Little mini-bubbles will appear on the bottom corner towards the center of their screen, and after they fire their next shot, more bubbles will rise up to join the ones still on their play field or they’ll emerge from the top of the screen to push the rest down. Either way, your opponent even more clutter to worry about. Each character has his or her own pattern of attacks. Marina only sends red, blue and yellow bubbles to her opponents screen, for example, while Luna will build up her attacks to exclusively force bubbles downward. If under any circumstances the mass of bubbles crosses the line between the play field and where your character is standing, you lose the round. In every mode of play, as time elapses the bubbles will start to creep down to where your character is sitting and watching the progress, so be ready to work fairly hard to get those good matches.

There are a few special bubbles to worry about, too. Rainbow bubbles are clear until colored bubbles that are in direct contact next to them burst. They then take on the color properties of those recently burst bubbles. By doing so strategically, you can potentially create a chain reaction as rainbow bubbles turn colors and burst next to more rainbow bubbles, and so on until there are none left that can match. Blocks are wooden and won’t burst for anything, so you have to drop them by bursting connected bubbles above them. Star bubbles, when you shoot a bubble and connect with it, will clear all bubbles of that very color. Finally, bombs will only blow up when all the bubbles in direct contact with it are burst.

Now, battles aren’t the only order of the day. Regular puzzles, sans any opponents abound here as well. The majority of the time it’s you against a combination of bubbles, trying to clear the stage of everything. These stages take two forms: either clear exactly what is on the screen, or keep clearing bubbles out as they continue to drop down until you reach the designated top of the heap. The former of these are either in the narrow play field that you find in the versus play, or are in even wider surroundings, almost filling the width of the screen. It is these two basic concepts of gaming, straightforward puzzle solving and head-to-head bubble busting, which charge all of the various modes of play to be found in the game.

Starting with Arcade Mode, you’re prompted to select from Puzzle, 1P vs. Computer or 1P vs. 2P. Puzzle in all it’s incarnations has you climbing an inverted pyramid with multiple paths featuring a multitude of single player tasks of every shape and size. 1P vs. Computer and 1P vs. 2P are pretty much what you’d expect. Challenge mode has you go through five different types of solo puzzle challenges, where you are rated and judged at various times on speed, technique, and whether you cleared all the levels or not. Win Contest mode has you going against every character in the game to see how many consecutive wins you can achieve. Finally, Collection mode is 1,000 single player puzzles that are all ready to be played at your leisure. From my experience, I far prefer playing this game with a second player, since they’re far less easy to predict and it’s just that much easier to laugh and groan at the missed shots

The game controls like a breeze. Left and right on the controller aim your bubble in those directions, while up will center the point of direction right to the top of the screen. Once satisfied, press X, and watch what happens. In pretty much all the levels, you can bounce bubbles off the walls until they either hit something or fall back down off the screen. This can be a help in pulling off some trickier shots. Sometimes, you’ll also have a line going off from your pointer so you can properly line up a shot right where you want it to go. Like any puzzle game where you have to match up colors or shapes, though, you just often don’t get the bubble you need half the time. Fortunately, this is alleviated by the game never having more than one bubble waiting to replace the one about to be shot at one time, and all bubbles in queue to be fired are always the colors of those on the play field, except in a few rare exceptions. This keeps the game nice and fair.

Graphically, this isn’t much to write home about, but puzzle games can’t be overly flashy or they distract too much from the task at hand, anyway. The colors for the bubbles are all distinct in all their incarnations, and they burst with some nifty effects, especially when there are Bubble Bobble enemies trapped inside them. The player characters are all fairly distinct in terms of personality thanks to their animation. They jump around and celebrate when they’re winning, sweat and cower when they’re losing, and are all pretty cute and amusing. Of particular note, the pathetic look on SSB’s face when he’s under pressure is just too priceless for words. Backgrounds are decent, and don’t distract you from the game itself. I particularly like the hot air balloons background, myself.

The soundtrack is all cute and, well, bubbly, which only makes the saccharinely-sweet setting even more so. Lots of light tones and pleasant treble here folks, and nothing that would give you the urge to headbang up a storm while wearing a heavy metal concert T-shirt, to put it one way… well, if this music does give you that urge, more power to you. The cute factor is carried on with the dings and chimes that play when you burst the bubbles, and also with most of the voices. Every character has a voice, and if you don’t know Japanese, you’ll be wondering just what the heck they’re saying all this time. They only say a few lines, and they repeat themselves a lot. That’s gets annoying kind of fast, to be honest, and that’s the games’ biggest failing. When that’s all that I can honestly find wrong with this game, though, that says a lot.

Bust A Move 99 is at it’s best with a second player, but on your own it’s pretty darn fun. There’s certainly enough puzzles to take in the game, and plenty of different characters to master as well, including some hidden ones. Like most late 90’s Playstation games, it’s getting harder to find new, so snag it on sight if you can find it.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 05/12/03, Updated 05/12/03