Bubble Bobble

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Young boys Bub and Bob were cursed and transformed into small dinosaurs. Their girlfriends are held prisoners by the Giant Bee Master and now Bub (and Bob) must fight their way through 100 levels to save the girls and kill the Bee, breaking the curse and gaining back their human nature. Your main quest is to jump from one platform to another and eliminate all your enemies by trapping them inside bubbles. To help Bub (and Bob) survive the challenge, you must always keep an eye for various power ups and bonuses that appear from time to time. The most valuable bonus is the chewing gum power up that can make you shoot different and more powerful bubbles (like the rapid-fire bubble for example). Also, you have the opportunity to complete the word EXTEND by collecting all letters needed. This bonus will transport Bub (or Bob or both) to the next level at once. There are also numerous other bonuses that will transport you to more levels, make you shoot fire blasts or take you to some extra stages to collect diamonds. The best way to play this game is with a friend as there are some levels that need some co-operation! Bubble Bobble is a really fun game to play! It's also very easy to get you into and learn its gameplay mechanism while its cuteness really draws you in! Bubble Bobble is one of the best arcade platform games ever created in video gaming history, hands down!

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The MS-DOS (IBM PC-compatibles) conversion is almost identical to the coin-op machine (a little bit slower though) and slightly slower than the Amiga and ST as well. Although the original arcade uses a palette of 256 colors, only around 20 colors are used on the PC and thus the EGA version is adequate enough to offer a pleasant and almost accurate conversion (much like the Amiga and ST versions that use 16-colors only). Also, the sprite animation is smooth and makes the game pleasantly playable! The game supports the AdLib sound hardware (or just your PC speaker). The funny music and the sound FX are quite the same as in the coin-op version, though slightly inferior to the Amiga and the Sharp X68000 (as expected from an Adlib and compatible sounds cards of its time). The music score is one of the most epic arcade scores ever!