93 lines
4.5 KiB
Plaintext
93 lines
4.5 KiB
Plaintext
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BUBBLE BOBBLE
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Taito's BUBBLE BOBBLE is a cute arcade game, and one of the few
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that's really designed for children. Yet it's challenging for even
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the most jaded or experienced adult gamers, as well.
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BUBBLE BOBBLE can be played in either one- or two-player mode (I
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recommend the latter). You are two dinosaurs, Bub and Bob, and your
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goal is to capture and demolish various beasties. You do this first
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by blowing bubbles at the beasties, then by bursting them once
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they're trapped inside. You play across a series of 100 different
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mazes, each as complicated and ingenious as anything you'll find in
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ARKANOID. Every maze is harder than the previous one, and you'll
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need many different strategies to proceed from maze to maze.
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When you burst the beasties, they turn into various delicious
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objects: bananas, oranges, lemons, watermelons, cherries,
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pineapples, and others. Scoring is achieved by getting Bub and Bob
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to eat the fruit before it disappears. Sometimes desserts appear as
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well, in the form of ice cream sundaes.
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While you're after the beasties (about 20-30 different kinds, with
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increasing variety as you get farther along the game), other bubbles
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and targets show up from time to time. There are Fire, Thunder, and
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Water bubbles; bursting any of them when they appear helps you to
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capture and burst the beasties. There are also "Timing Targets"
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(which change the pace of the maze), and "Magic Targets" (which
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consist of various power-ups, such as increases in speed,
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bubble-blowing distance, bombs, resistance to beastie attacks,
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etc.).
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If you don't burst the bubbles in which the beasties remain
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captive, they eventually break their way out and come roaring after
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you at double-speed, obviously anxious for revenge. If the beasties
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get to you _before_ you trap them in a bubble, you lose a life. You
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can run right and left across the screen, and jump up and down the
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maze platforms, to avoid or pursue the beasties.
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Along with everything else, you sometimes find a bunch of bubbles
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that have letters on them. If you can burst the correct bubbles and
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spell the word EXTEND (vertically to the left of the maze), you move
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automatically to the next level and earn an extra life.
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If you take too long in one level of BUBBLE BOBBLE, a dangerous
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creature by the name of Baron von Blubba appears (s/he looks like
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Moby Dick on a tear with a toothache). You have to avoid this one at
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all costs, until you've cleared the maze of the rest of the
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beasties.
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The game is surprisingly non-violent, for all the bubbling and
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bursting and chasing that goes on. The background music is
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appropriately sweet, reminiscen of the music played on carousels in
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amusement parks. Unfortunately, it becomes a bit irritating after a
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while, and you can't turn it off. I played BUBBLE BOBBLE on an Amiga
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500 with 1 MB of RAM; it requires only 512k, and works with any
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Amiga-compatible joysticks plugged into ports 1 and 2. The program
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is copy-protected.
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BUBBLE BOBBLE is not a particularly unique game when it comes to
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basic gameplay. The dinosaur/bubble/beastie idea is great, but this
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is ultimately just another "mazes and ladders" game. However, Taito
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has done everything possible to assure playability, so for children
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new to arcade gaming, this game will probably be their best
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introduction. Don't expect excitement, though, from those who've
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played lots of similar games already. BUBBLE BOBBLE is designed in
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the ARKANOID mold (complete with opening pseudo-space story), and
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feels similar to that game in terms of the creativity of maze
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variety. But it's much less addictive, and it's definitely no
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ARKANOID clone.
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Don't expect BUBBLE BOBBLE to be a demonstration of the superiority
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of computer game systems over 8-bit cartridge game systems, either.
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While I suspect the music quality in the Amiga version is an
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improvement over that on the Nintendo System, for the most part, the
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game looks about the same as it would on the latter. This is another
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way of saying that if you have a Nintendo and an Amiga, I don't
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think you'll be missing much by getting the cartridge instead of the
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disk.
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If, on the other hand, your only game machine is your computer, and
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you'd like to introduce your small child to the fun of videogames,
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BUBBLE BOBBLE is the perfect place to start. It's attractive in many
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ways, and will please parent and child alike.
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BUBBLE BOBBLE is published and distributed by Taito.
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*****DOWNLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS (304) 744-2253
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