Retro game revisit – Bubble Bobble

Bubble Bobble is one of Taito’s finest moments, an arcade classic first released in 1986 Bubble Bobble was a platform game where you and a friend controlled Bub and Bob, two tiny little dragons with an ability to blow bubbles and capture enemies in them, your aim was the clear the level and collect the prizes, rewards and bonus letters.

For the time Bubble Bobble really wasn’t that advanced a video game, it has static screens with no scrolling and relied on its strong playability factor and tactics to gain it fans.  The real skill was you could despatch the enemies in a variety of ways and use your bubble blowing skill to do various things, including using it to float upwards instead of trapping an enemy in it and then despatching them by bursting it.

The Music in Bubble Bobble was also a strong point created by the well known Japanese team Zuntata, who you probably know from a host of other video games like Darius, Night Striker and Raystorm, Zuntata are Taito’s sound development team, and even had their own record label pushing out over 50 albums plus.

The Graphics in Bubble Bobble were simple but stylish and the character design was very graphic, the strong colours used made it appealing, and of course you have that classic Bubble Bobble font.  For anyone that remembers the original arcade cabinet it has some great design graphics and was one of those games that didn’t lie too much from the cabinet art to the actual in game graphics.

Bubble Bobble was popular and with good reason as we’ve looked at, it had good graphics, good gamplay with skill and tactics involved and some great music to keep you busting through the levels.  Because of its popularity Bubble Bobble has been converted to practically every video and computer game system in the universe, I kid you not.  From the Commodore 64, Atari ST, Nintendo Gameboy, Sega Saturn, Sony Playstation to the Wii, Bubble Bobble gets around!

Bubble Bobbles popularity also earned it some sequels, most notably it spawned a sequel Rainbow Islands which featured the main characters Bub and Bob in human form.  They also made a return in the next game in the series Parasol Stars, and while these were the main true sequels you also have a ton of spin off from Bubble Bobble 2 to Bubble Bobble Neo.

So if you havent ever played Bubble Bobble or one of it’s spin off’s then chances are you have been living in a bubble, and now is as good a time as any to check out this retro classic.