Tag Archives: Bust A Move

Bust-A-Move 2 — Issue 47

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Bub­ble Bob­ble Part Deux

Bust-A-Move gets down again in sequel

Long ago, bub­ble pop­ping took hold of my inter­est, right about the time I start­ed get­ting hair on my chest and some sense acquired when it came to good qual­i­ty video games. And would­n’t you know it, my late great mama — the dear­ly depart­ed GI Mama — also divined that she was a fan of the bub­ble-pop­ping non­sense that I’d brought home for my Super Nin­ten­do. Alas, my tastes had to grow so we looked for more bub­ble-pop­ping non­sense and found there was a sequel or two to the mad­ness. What apro­pos popped up was Bust-A-Move 2.

Now, let’s not get it twist­ed: This is the same old Bust-A-Move you’re used to play­ing if bust­ing bub­bles is your thing. Noth­ing is dras­ti­cal­ly dif­fer­ent than the for­mu­la estab­lished in the orig­i­nal game: You pop clus­ters of like-col­ored bub­bles in an effort to clear estab­lished puz­zles. This basic premise was set up in the first game for the SNES and it has­n’t changed, no mat­ter the iter­a­tion. But what has changed some­what is the pre­sen­ta­tion. In this ver­sion, there is an illu­mi­nat­ed map puz­zle path that your char­ac­ter can choose, and deci­sions have to be made to get to the end puz­zle. The deci­sion to include a vis­i­ble path struc­ture is a nice step for­ward, but still needs some pay­off to be a gamechanger. 

Slight­ly dif­fer­ent yet famil­iar are the graph­ics. Bust-A-Move 2 has­n’t real­ly changed all that much in the looks depart­ment. There are some new graph­ics for the back­grounds dur­ing puz­zles, the char­ac­ters are more defined and the bub­bles them­selves are more crisp and deep­er hued to pop but that’s about it. It looks OK for an N64 puz­zle game, but there are oth­ers out there doing a lot more with the same con­sole resources, such as Mag­i­cal Tetris Challenge.

The sound­track is a lit­tle more bub­bly than the orig­i­nal but has a lit­tle less charm than the first game. The songs are slight­ly catchy, but not near­ly as mem­o­rable as the first game’s 16-bit organ-inspired schtick. How­ev­er, what you’ll real­ly notice that’s dif­fer­ent is the addi­tion of voic­es. Now, your char­ac­ter and the oppo­nents make a lit­tle noise when they achieve a com­bo. It’s cute, even with the shrill squawk­ing that shows up in the menu.

But let’s be hon­est, what you came here for was to learn if the puz­zle game­play is up to the stan­dard estab­lished by the first game. Yes, it is, and here’s why: Not much changed. No crazy weird mechan­ics shoe­horned in, no mis­steps in how the bub­bles bank or strange con­cepts cob­bled togeth­er (aside from the sticky plat­forms that inex­plic­a­bly start show­ing up halfway through the sto­ry mode) make appear­ances here. You can be rest assured that it’s the Bust-A-Move that we all know and love.

My beloved late GI Mama once declared Bust-A-Move a cheat­ing game while I was mol­ly whop­ping her in a ver­sus mode run. She said she’d see me in the sequel. Well, the sequel here is just enough jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to wait for that rematch in heav­en when my time comes. It’s noth­ing new but then again, some­times stick­ing with the estab­lish­ment is the best idea when it comes to bub­bles part deux.

Bust-A-Move — 1Q2017 issue

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Puz­zle Bob­ble’s break­out hit

Bub­ble Bob­ble isn’t super famous last I checked, but I learned who Bub and Bob were by the time I fin­ished their first puz­zle effort for the Super NES, the mid-90s appro­pri­ate­ly named Bust-A-Move. 

There’s much fun and mirth to be had in the bub­ble-pop­ping title. There’s not much sto­ry oth­er than Bub and Bob are pop­ping bub­bles to save a friend, who is trapped at the end (lev­el 100). Once their friend is saved, that’s it. But, that’s assum­ing you can make it that far. 

Bust-A-Move is incred­i­bly sim­ple to play but hard to mas­ter. The con­cept is easy to under­stand: aim a launch­er and match three like-col­ored bub­bles. The bub­bles will fall off the play­ing field, clear­ing space and rows so that you can work toward clear­ing fur­ther bub­bles. After a cer­tain num­ber are cleared, the ceil­ing of the well low­ers, inch­ing clos­er to a vis­i­ble line. Once the line is crossed with a bub­ble, the game is over. Basi­cal­ly, it’s reverse Tetris with bub­bles instead of lines. The trick­i­ness in mas­ter­ing the game comes in pop­ping the bub­bles. There are dif­fer­ent tech­niques to achiev­ing the results that you want, but it real­ly comes down to know­ing how to aim and learn­ing the fabled bankshot off the side of the well.

With its sim­plic­i­ty in learn­ing, Bust-A-Move quick­ly dis­tin­guish­es itself as fun to play. I request­ed the game for my 14th birth­day, and I’ve had a blast play­ing the orig­i­nal since. There are oth­er games in the series, but this one is the best out of all of the sequels and spin­offs of the series. The con­trols aren’t too stiff, though some­times I have com­plaints about the par­tic­u­lar way a bub­ble bounces or sticks a lit­tle too eas­i­ly to the first bub­ble it comes close to. Yet, the con­trols aren’t horrible. 

The sim­ple theme also shows in the graph­ics. Bust-A-Move is one of the bright­est and cutest games I’ve ever played. The col­ors pop and while you’re using col­ored bub­bles, they don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly inter­fere with the back­ground graph­ics, which could make for a con­fus­ing play field.

Bust-A-Move also gets a nod for its atten­tion paid to oth­er modes such as Chal­lenge and the two-play­er bub­ble pop­ping. Chal­lenge is fun and a good test of skills: You’re tasked with pop­ping as many bub­bles as you can before it’s game over. It’s hard to pop a lot if you’re new to the game, but as your skills progress, you can and will see a dif­fer­ence in how long you man­age to last. The two-play­er mode is fun also, because you can either play against the com­put­er or against anoth­er human play­er. Any game that gives me the option to play two-play­er against the com­put­er auto­mat­i­cal­ly gets a nod because that injects longevi­ty into a title immediately.

There’s a decent amount of depth to Bust-A-Move and it cer­tain­ly makes for an inter­est­ing puz­zle dis­trac­tion on the SNES. It’s worth explor­ing the bub­ble-pop­ping world with the orig­i­nal bub­ble eliminator.