"Always Lace Your Bubble Gum with Crack"
A Review of Bubble Bobble, by Zephyr �Death of Monkeys� McMundersondelsonderson
Have you ever wondered why Godzilla made that squeaky whine when he opened his mouth to blow colored radiation at buildings? While many experts have theorized that this was because he had a baby stuck between his teeth, it was actually because he was trying to be like his heroes, Bub and Bob, the protagonists of the game Bubble Bobble. Sadly, Godzilla never mastered the trick of encasing his enemies in bubbles before popping them off the screen, so he had to lumber around terrorizing Japan in despair.
The basis of this incredibly awesome oldschool game is that the evil Bad Guy has stolen away your precious Lady Love for his Nefarious Purposes which are never explained. And just to make things interesting, he does the same thing to your twin brother. In order to stop you from meddling, the Bad Guy turns you both from hopeless saps (a la Ice Climbers without the mallets and climbing gear) into dinosaurs with the ability to blow bubbles and thus trap your enemies. How he does this, or even better, *why* he does this, is never explained. The Bad Guy then flees into his impenetrable dungeon, filled with a hundred or more levels full of smaller bad guys, for no reason whatsoever. In fact, the only explanation the game gives you for anything at all is how the dinosaurs pop the bubbles: dinosaurs are spiky. See? Makes perfect sense.
What makes this game great is that it�s two-player cooperative play at its best. 2-P co-op, as we all know, is the best cooperative gaming experience there is; fewer than that and it�s not cooperative, more than that and who�re you going to get to play with you? (As an aside - I mean, seriously, what is this Zelda: Four Swords crap? If you actually have three friends that you can call up and get to come over and play Zelda with you, you�re spending way too much time making friends and not enough time playing Zelda. Let�s keep the priorities in line, people: there are princesses that need saving.) Even on the rare occasions when you *do* have two friends over who want to play, you have to have one person watching so they can say things like �I could�ve done that without dying once,� and �Nice work, I think that�s the record for lowest score ever,� which helps to build up the proper competitive gaming atmosphere. And in a friendly game like Bubble Bobble, you can�t attack each other directly, so you have to find creative ways of screwing each other over indirectly; without that competitive spirit in the air, it�s hard to concentrate on important details like that.
Now, like so many games, this game lost something vital when it was converted from the old Nintendo into the PlayStation version: infinite continues. In some games infinite continues might be a mistake, turning the game into simply an exercise in patience rather than a true test of skill � but let�s face it, while there are hardcore gamers playing Bubble Bobble, they�re not playing it when they�re feeling like a hardcore game. This is a fun game, a game to play when company comes over or while you�re on vacation with the family. And the infinite continues made the game infinitely playable (or at least able to be played for a reeeealy long time by pretty much anybody), without having to be paying attention every second. You simply lost all of your points when you had to continue (as is still the case), and continued to have fun and try for a better score next time. Now, when I play, there is a definite time limit attached to my game. I�m *not* going to say �hey, let�s give it one more try� after we�ve just gotten up to level 84 � or, heaven forbid, 100, finally, after three hours of playing at least � and then lost our last continue. And there are levels when you are *going* to lose a whole continue, just on that one level � 79, for instance, starts you off in a location that is impossible to get out off without both mad skillz AND a miracle. And after that, you still have to contend with the actual enemies. So pretty much whenever I play this game these days, I�m left with a bad taste in my mouth � because, after all that time spent, I ended up losing. In the first version, the Nintendo version, I spent a hell of a lot more time playing it, but I always felt good afterward, because I either stopped because I wanted to or because I won. And it was the perfect game to introduce non-gamers to the sport, because it was cute and totally possible to win while playing with someone completely new to the game.
In summary, I have two things to say to those who imported Bubble Bobble to my PlayStation, after I had been without its bubble-filled madness for so many years:
Thank you, thank you, thank you, you have brought back the glory of the gaming industry. Now non-gamers can learn to love the games again. I might even get a date! Yessssssssssss.
What the hell were you thinking? Never mind about point 1.
On the universal 1 to 10 scale, I would give the Nintendo version of this game an A+. The BS (