Puzzle Bobble takes the two dragons from Bubble Bobble, Bub and Bob, and gives them a job that has nothing to do with platforms. A wall of coloured bubbles hangs from the top of the screen. At the bottom, a launcher fires one bubble at a time. Join three or more of the same colour and they burst, and any bubbles hanging from them fall away too. Every few shots the ceiling grinds down a step, and if the bubbles cross the line at the bottom, the game is over. Edge thought the Bubble Bobble connection was “mere window dressing”. The game underneath was so simple to learn and so easy to copy that, as Retro Gamer put it, it “has been much-cloned since then”.
Fast facts
- Developer: Taito.
- Released: in Japanese arcades in 1994, on Taito’s own B System board; SNK released it on the Neo Geo arcade system later the same year.
- Other name: Bust-A-Move, the title used in North America and on some European releases.
- Home versions: Super Nintendo and Neo Geo CD (1995), 3DO, and Game Gear (1996), among others.
- Characters: Bub and Bob, from Bubble Bobble (1986).
How it plays
The skill is in the aim. A shot travels in a straight line and bounces off the side walls, so a bubble that cannot be reached directly can often be banked into place. Since a bubble sticks where it first touches, the best shots are not the ones that burst the most bubbles but the ones that cut away the cluster holding up everything below it. Some rounds are built around that idea, with a whole hanging structure waiting for one well-placed shot. The bubble colours on offer come only from the colours left on the screen, and the screen shakes before the ceiling drops to give a moment’s warning.
Edge, reviewing the Neo Geo CD version in August 1995, called it “standard post-Tetris fare, but well executed, with lots of cleverly designed levels”. It described the game as a cross between Tetris and Puyo Puyo, and that was truest in the two-player mode. Bubbles one player clears land on the other player’s side of the screen, so a big drop turns into an attack. Alone, Edge found it “limited”, but two players lifted it “above average”: “it’s worryingly easy to lose hours playing game after game of twoplayer Puzzle Bobble”. There was a small kindness for beginners, too: after a lost life, a dotted guideline appears for one level to help with aiming.
Arcade to home
The original ran on Taito’s B System, a board similar to its F2 hardware. Retro Gamer noted that it never moved to the newer F3 board, which carried the sequels. The version most players met came out on SNK’s Neo Geo, where Edge saw it as further proof of the system’s “seemingly effortless capacity for old-fashioned, basic but highly playable games”. The Neo Geo CD release, published by SNK with Taito credited as developer, cost £50 in Britain.
On home consoles the game usually took the name Bust-A-Move. Nintendo’s American magazine Nintendo Power listed the Super NES Bust A Move for March and April 1995, called it “another deceptively simple action puzzler” and noted its new Thunder, Flame and Wild Card bubbles. In Britain Total! reviewed the Super Nintendo version as Bust-A-Move, and later summed it up in one line: “Completely addictive and 100% slick, this is one of the best puzzle games ever.” Super Play, which printed a page of passwords for the later rounds, called it “Puzzle Bobble or, as some foreigners would have it, Bust-a-Move”. The home versions added 70 new rounds to the arcade’s 30, for 100 in all.
The bubble shooter
Taito followed it with Puzzle Bobble 2 and further sequels, which moved to the F3 arcade board, and the series spread to almost every format, including Puzzle Bobble Mini for SNK’s Neo Geo Pocket. The idea spread further than the series. Retro Gamer counted Puzzle Bobble among the defining puzzle games for having “spawned a host of sequels and spin-offs” and for being “much-cloned”, and its aim-and-match play became the template for a whole family of “bubble shooter” games on computers and phones.
Taito kept the series going. Puzzle Bobble Everybubble! came out for the Nintendo Switch in May 2023, with a mode in which up to four players fight off bubble-trapped Space Invaders.
Sources
- Edge issue 23, August 1995, p. 72: Neo Geo CD review (SNK, Taito, £50; “mere window dressing”; Tetris and Puyo Puyo; the falling ceiling; one-player limits and the two-player mode; the dotted guideline; Bub and Bob; the Neo-Geo’s “old-fashioned, basic but highly playable games”; seven out of ten).
- Retro Gamer issue 45, 2007, pp. 38–39: Taito’s F-series hardware; the original Puzzle Bobble only on the Taito B System, sequels on the F3.
- Retro Gamer issue 119, October 2013, p. 43: Puzzle Bobble (1994), “Bust-A-Move as it was otherwise known”, “spawned a host of sequels and spin-offs and has been much-cloned since then”.
- Nintendo Power issue 70, March 1995, p. 107: Bust A Move for the Super NES, March–April 1995, Thunder, Flame and Wild Card bubbles, “another deceptively simple action puzzler”.
- Total! issue 46, October 1995, p. 78: review index, Bust-A-Move (reviewed in issue 44), “one of the best puzzle games ever”.
- Super Play issue 36, October 1995, p. 62: passwords, “Puzzle Bobble or, as some foreigners would have it, Bust-a-Move”.
- Sega Retro, “Bust-A-Move” (web, secondary): Game Gear version (1996), the rules, the 30 arcade rounds and 100 home rounds, shots bouncing off the walls, colours drawn from those on screen, the warning shake. https://segaretro.org/Bust-A-Move
- Wikipedia, “Puzzle Bobble” (web, secondary): arcade release in June 1994 and on the Neo Geo MVS on 21 December 1994; dates of the home versions; later bubble-shooter games modelled on it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puzzle_Bobble
- Gematsu, “Puzzle Bobble Everybubble! launches May 23”, February 2023 (web, secondary): the Switch release and its Space Invaders mode. https://www.gematsu.com/2023/02/puzzle-bobble-everybubble-launches-may-23