Beat. This game immediately showed its superiority over the 1st game with excellent graphics for the NES and more precise feeling controls. It was not as difficult but I still had to look up how to beat a few stages. The first time was to learn about the puff up flying, which the game did not teach and I did not figure out on my own. I was trying to bubble jump like in the previous. Floating was exactly the thing I thought the first game should have instead of bubble jumping but some levels made it tricky with reversed flow. There was greater variety of power ups and enemies, including ones that took direct hp damage from bubbles. Those were interesting additions but the most difficult stage was near the middle with a helicopter that had to be shot down by floating up or falling through the bottom of the screen. The late game had annoying mech enemies that fired homing missiles that could not be bubbled at all. There were quite a few times where I felt I had to spend hits/lives to get past stages.

I did not care for the bonus stages that were literally volley ball and basketball, both of which I performed terribly. The bosses were not too difficult and were well designed, though the story still had the nonsense about a human boy turning into the bubble dinosaur. I don't remember playing this as a kid, which is a shame because it was a significant improvement over the first game. It still had single screen stages instead of evolving towards Super Mario though.

7.8/10