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Bubble Bobble Game Review

Bubble Bobble is a 1986 arcade platformer game published by Taito for various platforms including NES, Commodore 64 and Sega Master System. It’s an absolute classic.

Apparently, Taito had trouble maintaining their relevance in the gaming arena in the mid eighties. They had a tremendous hit back in 1978 with the iconic ‘Space Invaders’, but since then they somewhat faded into the background. Cue in Fukio Mitsuji who wanted to imbue fun, simplicity and the endearing factor into his next project in order to appeal to both sexes, as a result Bubble Bobble was born.

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In this arcade platformer, you control one of the two brothers, Bubby or Bobby, or both if you play with co-op with a friend, as the two set out to rescue their girlfriends from an evil baron in what is a very archetypal platformer plot premise that works for this particular period. The gameplay is the true highlight here as it’s simplistic, yet varied and incredibly engaging.

Unlike others of the genre, this game introduced a very authentic and new gameplay mechanic where you throw bubbles with your dinosaur in order to both capture and kill enemies and jump over to a higher platform within the game screen. Although I personally found it overly hard to jump on these bubbles at times as their movements felt clumsy from time to time, I still hugely respected this game for its originality. It eventually inspired another favorite of mine, 1990’s ‘Snow Bros’ in its influential gameplay mechanics.

I liked the different power-ups and in particular the game’s secrets. Yes, this is one of the only games during the mid eighties that actually employed secret screens that you can activate by getting a certain power-up, thus you end up not only collecting many points and rewards, but also the ultimate reward – you jump from that level to the next one immediately, basically skipping it. That came in very handy for some incredibly difficult levels.

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The enemies are superbly designed and also quite difficult, at least some of them are. I liked the introduction of the ghost to speed things up and endanger you if you are not finished with the level on time, and in particular the level design was stupendous throughout. I loved the fact that you have to go up and down the screen depending on the design and the platforms themselves can be both jumped through and/or they can be firm and concealed. That was a great choice that made for a versatile playing experience.

Bubble Bobble also has excellent bosses, all of them quite hard to beat and all were different in design and tactics. The use of the power-ups was essential during these battles and your obtaining of them got significantly more difficult as the game progressed. Not only the bosses were hard, some of the regular levels were just incredibly frustrating to finish as well with both enemies and the design itself working in tandem to successfully prevent you from doing so.

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Technically speaking, Bubble Bobble is just solid. For its time it was great, but graphically speaking, it left a lot to be desired. Certainly the character designs were amazing, but the background work was dull and uninspired. However, the controls are great, the game runs smoothly, it is infectiously fun and it has a great replay value. The soundtrack is the technical highlight with such an irresistibly catchy theme that was repeated throughout, but still so cute and fun.