Classic Bubble Bobble

"Bubble busting fun keeping a fair pace to the original game."

Opener:

If you were not playing video games much in the 1980s you probably think that these guys originated from the Bust-A-Move puzzler series of games from Taito. The truth be told, you are wrong as these are some classic dinosaurs from the arcades in the mid 1980s. The original concept of the game was a two player cooperative game in which you went around around 100 levels of progressively harder rooms. In each room you had a fixed time to get all the baddies into a bubble and then pop it destroying them before a ghost dino would come out and finish you off. While this holds true for the most part in this version of the game some things have been changed, not exactly in all cases a good thing.

Graphics
The graphics of Classic Bubble Bobble are quite good and is comparable to the less known late NES game Bubble Bobble 2. The graphics are leaps and bounds over the original arcade classic adding much depth to the look of the levels. Each series of levels along your way are theme based, and from what you can see below the first set of areas are placed in the woods. Later areas you will come across are outside along some buildings, and another you will visit places you in the sky along some floating rock fixtures. Each of the areas have pretty lush background graphics with some decent depth to them, but the character graphics are sort of plain. The enemies, Bub, and items are at most around 3 or 4 colors and sometimes tend to even blend in with the background which can make eyeballing what is going on a little more difficult. A nice thing to mention though is that the title and other still screens that help the story along are very nicely drawn and colored in quite well.

Rating: 4.0

Sound
The sound from this game is pretty great. The audio if you have played the original Bubble Bobble you will find has been greatly moved into this version of the game. While the original music and sound effects have been retained in this game there have been some added music and effects too that sound pretty good as well. The type of music you will run into are shorter looping tunes which are quite cheery and will stick into your head. Since these are good pieces of music I'm sure you wouldn't mind as I don't. The sound effects are quite fun too such as the sound when you trap a baddie in a bubble and another when you pop it. I commend the effort of trying to retain all the original effects of the old game into this and the end product was very well done.

Rating: 4.0

Theme & Fun
The theme of this outting in the Bubble Bobble series is not as great as the original from the days of the arcade long ago. The original title was built around a cooperative style so that it took the efforts of two players to get through all the levels to see the happy real ending to this game. Sadly in Classic Bubble Bobble we were only given a one player game. To cover this up Bub's brother Bob has come down with a bad illness and to save his life you need to go out into the world and recover the moon water before it is too late. In my opinion, they were either constrained with time or just too darn lazy to add in the second player support and this was a cover up. That aside the game is pretty fun, but will leave an original Bubble Bobble player with a hollow feeling inside. While the game retains all the mechanics of the original with added perks it just doesn't feel right. The idea of bosses in the game at certain points was a fun idea that I really did like, it wasn't enough to make me happy about losing the original feeling of the game.

Rating: 3.0

Play Control
The play control of Bubble Bobble is a mix of good and bad. While the enemy characters and player move around as they have in the past a few things I can call bugs snuck in. Though I have not done this myself, I have been told that you can put enough bubbles together and use them almost as a cushion to float up in the air. Bubbles were never meant for this, and only to capture baddies and if you were lucky and timed it right as a help to jump to higher areas. My major beef with the title was that as it retained the control of the old game it didn't work well on Gameboy Color as the whole map of each level did not fit on screen. As a result you could end up being hit from above or below because you could not see the attacks coming. I personally would have really appreciated a second graphics mode like Ms. Pac-Man for Gameboy Color had in which the graphics were scaled down to fit the whole screen. While that is not the prettiest way to do it, it would have been helpful. Another idea would be to port and scale down the old NES graphics and enhance them like Capcom's Ghosts 'N Goblins was on Gameboy Color.

Rating: 2.5

Challenge
The challenge of Bubble Bobble has always been a strong point that made it a fun replayable classic in my book. The challenge has surely been retained in this edition of the game if not more so because of the flaws that I pointed out above. As you can't see the whole screen before you it makes it harder to detect and incoming enemy out to gang up on you and finish you off. With this added to the good challenge already in Bubble Bobble this makes for quite a more difficult game. Sadly I can't say that this added difficulty is the good fun type, but more of the aggravating I can't see everything and it wasn't my fault I died type challenge.

Rating: 4.0

Replay Value and Closing Notes:
While the Bubble Bobble theme behind it and its pretty good challenge this game does even with its little flaws have some good replay value to it. As the game has many themed areas with some interesting new bosses added in to spice up the game there is good replay value points for people who wants to play over some sections of the game. The replay though does suffer quite a bit though as the two player support which was key in Bubble Bobble is not present in this title.

I'm a pretty big fan of the old Bubble Bobble games and have the original decent arcade port on the NES to the day. This game is not as good as the original in my opinion, but it still is a fun title that I believe some people could really enjoy it. If you played the original before I'd probably give this a rent first unless you are a die hard fan. If you are new to Bubble Bobble though I think you will like this game, unless you bore easily.

Overall Rating: 3.5 / 5.0

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/23/04