Bubble Bobble is one of the best coin-op games ever created in video games history. The game hit the arcades in 1986 and a year later was ported to all home computers and consoles.
Review
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 Amiga conversion is almost identical to the coin-op version (but with a little bit slower action) which is also slightly slower than the Atari ST version. Technically speaking, only the Sharp X68000 conversion is practically an arcade perfect conversion to the original. Each level is a classic platform with different colors (around 20 on screen), unique design, smooth sprite animations and a variety of nice sprites. The matte black backgrounds don't inspire confidence in the game's visuals, but the levels are nicely designed. Especially for the Amiga conversion, I would expect it to be almost identical to the coin-op , due to the OCS advanced graphics hardware while no special graphics techniques are used even on the original. The funny music and the sound FX are exactly the same as the coin-op version and superior to the ST and MS-DOS! Especially the music, is well matched to the game's atmosphere and probably some of the most memorable tunes found in the video games' history!
CPU: Motorola MC68000 7.16 MHz MEMORY: 512KB of Chip RAM (OCS chipset - A500), 512 KB of Slow RAM or Trapdoor RAM can be added via the trapdoor expansion, up to 8 MB of Fast RAM or a Hard drive can be added via the side expansion slot. The ECS chipset (A500+) offered 1MB on board to 2MB (extended) of Chip RAM. GRAPHICS: The OCS chipset (Amiga 500) features planar graphics (codename Denise custom chip), with up to 5 bit-planes (4 in hires), allowing 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 color screens, from a 12bit RGB palette of 4096 colors. Resolutions varied from 320x256 (PAL, non-interlaced, up to 4096 colors) to 640x512 (interlace, up to 4 colors). Two special graphics modes where also included: Extra Half Bright with 64 colors and HAM with all 4096 colors on-screen. The ECS chipset models (Amiga 500+) offered same features but also extra high resolution screens up to 1280x512 pixels (4 colors at once). SOUND: (Paula) 4 hardware-mixed channels of 8-bit sound at up to 28 kHz. The hardware channels had independent volumes (65 levels) and sampling rates, and mixed down to two fully left and fully right stereo outputs
12bit RGB 4096-colors palette (32 to 4096 colors on screen)
Comments
comment on 2009-09-13 04:23:29
Atarian75
Join Date: 2009-08-30
Yeah Wonderboy! But remember? The ST had faster action inside (due to faster MC68000).
comment on 2009-09-13 05:15:25
Freddy
Join Date: 2009-09-07
Huge action! Addicted to it me and my friends playing co-op!
comment on 2009-09-13 05:23:02
Freddy
Join Date: 2009-09-07
Also nice on CPC and Commodore
comment on 2010-03-17 20:18:17
Wonderboy
Join Date: 2009-09-12
Freddy it's nice on the 8bits I know. Especially the music theme on Commodore!!!
comment on 2010-04-17 00:12:23
ndial
Join Date: 2009-06-03
Well I was expecting the ST to use its digisynth to reproduced the original in-game tune from the arcades (like the Amiga version). Eitherway the game was a success on the ST and Amiga
comment on 2012-03-16 13:58:48
16bitManiac
Join Date: 2012-03-16
OMG...this one I remember from the days I had a CPC464! When I played it on my ST and Amiga, I just couldn't resist to finish within 2 hours!