Bubble Bobble (1984) (VG)

User Rating:

8.8/10   

Genre:

Animation | Family | Action | Adventure | Fantasy

Tagline:

These Two Hungry Dinos Will Do Anything To Eat!

Plot:

Bub & Bob, twin dinosaur brothers, begin a fantastic journey to recover the food stolen from their people by the evil Baron Von Bubba. |

Plot Keywords:

Food | Dinosaur | Video Game | First Of Series | Bubble

Country:

Japan

Color:

Color

Company:

Taito Corporation

Trivia:

Taito, game's creators, announced in 1996 that they had lost the game's original source code during a reorganization process. In order to produce the sequels and ports that had started production around that time, the programmers had to reverse engineer them by playing the older Bubble Bobble games and studying the game mechanics.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude (2004) (VG)

If you still own your NES, "Bubble Bobble" is worth your time.

There's no plot, the graphics are horrible and the same darn "beep, boop" song plays during all 100 stages --- but we're taking about a NES game here, and for a videogame crafted in 1984, "Bubble Bobble" still packs a strong multiplayer punch.

Joining the ranks of other top-notch multiplayer games on the NES such as "Battletoads", "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game" and "Double Dragon", "Bubble Bobble" pits you into a so-called 'cave of monsters', which is really just a whole lot of platform stages, some colorful, some fun and some damn near impossible, and sees you as a tiny green dinosaur as you rid the screen of pesky baddies. While single player mode may not be the shining achievement of this cartridge, when you plug a second controller into the old gray box, things really liven up! The two-player mode is great and warrants the purchase of this game all by itself.

The baddies become more and more powerful and plentiful, and the stages become increasingly difficult as you advance through the game. By Stage 80, the game gets extremely difficult --- many a controller has been broken as a result of being thrown across the room in a blind rage --- and you'll likely want to give up. It is certainly quite an achievement to beat the final boss; that giant, floating, popsical-throwing hooded turd who's impossibly hard. But hey, it's all in good fun. NES games are, by today's standards, all difficult. Why? In those days, because most games did not have 'save' features and were relatively short, programmers had to increase the difficulty to keep gamers busy for a while.

In today's competitive gaming market, people tend to think that cool logos, fast processors and 3D graphics are the most important parts of a game --- when did we forget that FUN is the main ingredient? "Bubble Bobble" is an enjoyable --- albeit difficult --- romp through the Nintendo Entertainment System's 8-bit world, and I highly recommend it.

Game Over.