Bubble Bobble (1986)

Beat all 100 levels to get the bad ending, then used password to play the bonus levels for the good ending. I remember playing this back in the day and beating it coop with my sister. Possibly also with my cousin. Now after playing through the entire thing solo with save states and slow motion, I have a hard time understanding how we beat the game as kids! It started off simple; blow bubbles to trap enemies then jump on, crush into walls or cut with your back/head spikes to kill the enemy. The level design was very primitive with just a single screen filled with different layouts of space vs blocks. The jumping was extremely floaty but it did make sense for the bubble theme; must be very low gravity or something. I soon realized that pits on the bottom connected to the top of the screen so there were no falling deaths. The level design became more and more obnoxious as the game went on, significantly reducing the fun. There was nothing wrong with having to use powerups and pits but I disliked the later game reliance on instant pops (perfectly timing bubble shots at melee range to instantly kill enemies) and bubble jumping. The amount of time before enemies escaped bubbles reduced significantly as the game went on and I often could not catch them as they floated up. This lead to more insta pops. More enemies were placed into tight confines with no way out, forcing me to use extremely risky insta pops. Bubble jumping was extremely difficult to pull off as I could only do it by holding down both turbo buttons. It seemed like it was far too easy to destroy your own bubbles with your spikes. Maybe this was easier in 2 player but it should have been much easier, possibly even riding a single bubble up or enclosing yourself in a bubble to float or fly up.

I could not beat level 57, which was a barren map with a single long platform at the top filled with enemies that shoot down. It was nearly impossible to bubble jump up without getting killed, and this was only around the half point of the game. This was by far the hardest level, and showed how the difficulty did not progress from easier to more difficult but rather jumped back and forth. This level was so frustrating that I skipped it by looking up the password. It should never have been created, or at least hidden deep into the good ending path. Later levels also annoyed me with blocks that were not solid. At least they never put in invisible blocks. The final boss took way too many hits to defeat and the good ending ruined the game for me. I thought it was about dinosaurs that could blow bubbles but the ending showed they were actually humans that somehow transformed into bubble dinosaurs to rescue their kidnapped girls. Lame.

This game did not live up to my childhood memories but was still a classic. Innovative fun gameplay for the time but it was too difficult at times. Using passwords to pick up at any level regardless of deaths was much better than having to start over from scratch. These bubble mechanics would work well with larger levels more akin to Super Mario and Kirby.

7.0/10

Welp I was going to do my full playtest on MAME to try to get through the whole game but sheeeeesh 100 Rounds. That's too much! Unless I really truly love it like with 1942. Today I had the opportunity to play it with my younger brother! Finally, getting to play 2-player games (we also played Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 yay).

I got the high score (154,870) which was largely thanks to a Round with one of those Flower power up things. On future plays with family or friends over, I think we could def do bette rnow that we know the mechanics and how to avoid dying (which I kept doing lol, thank goodness for infinite coins :-p)

We got to Round 23 could have gotten further but we both felt we had played enough. Imma count this as my playtest. Fun to play, not worth playing all 100 rounds tho. Full of interesting powerups, quirks you have to trial and error to learn, and ostensibly fun gameplay. Oh, and a top-notch jingle. Unfortunately wasn't captivating enough for me or my brother to be worth the full 100 rounds though! Especially with some of the can't-pass-through-gaps mechanics without certain power ups. I mean, the level design was clearly clever and they'd provide you the power up needed to slip through as the Water or the Lightning power up, etc., but again, I'd probly just prefer if you could slip through those cracks anyway and just have fun with chaos and shooting out bubbles :-p