Nerd Mentality

Bubble Bobble Revolution

Posted January 20th 2007 by Matthew Warren.

Bubble Bobble is my all-time, absolute most favorite game in the whole wide world. There, I said it. I'm out of the closet. Guiding blue and green dinosaurs around a world created under the influence of acid, pot, or a mix of the two is one of my favorite things to do. One day, I will have a Bubble Bobble arcade cabinet sitting next to my Galaga cabinet and Tommy pinball machine in my house. Apparently, my love of Bubble Bobble qualifies me to write a review of Bubble Bobble Revolution for the Nintendo DS, a game which takes everything that made the original Bubble Bobble fun and pukes it out as a nearly unrecognizable mess of frustratingly bloated graphics, irritatingly unresponsive controls, and an overall experience so saccharinely sweet you run the risk of your DS melting into a puddle of liquid cute.

Bubble Bobble is a game featuring two dinosaurs, Bubblun and Bobblun. Everybody calls them Bub and Bob because Bubblun and Bobblun sound retarded. One day their girlfriends were taken away, and so they entered a cave to try to rescue them. This epic storyline is introduced to you at the beginning of the NES game in the classic quote "NOW IT IS THE BEGINNING OF A FANTASTIC ADVENTURE!! LET US MAKE A JOURNEY TO THE CAVE OF MONSTERS!!" The game features some of the most bizarre, out of left field-esque gameplay known to man, and it is an experience like nothing else when you can sit down with somebody else who really appreciates it and breeze through its 100+ levels together. The game features a fantastic co-op mode, and it is almost a crime to not utilize it with a friend. The essence of Bubble Bobble's gameplay is trapping enemies in bubbles and then popping the bubbles, turning the now-dead enemies into fruit, sweets, jewelry, or a myriad of other equally nonsensical items. When you clear a level of its enemies, you progress to the next. Along the way you encounter various powerups, such as the shoe (makes you move faster), red cross (makes you...shoot fireballs), and the umbrella (transports you ahead about five levels). If none of this makes any sense to you, then you are probably sane. Playing Bubble Bobble is like an interactive LSD trip.

First off, the graphics: Bub and Bob used to be well-designed, compact little bundles of pixel-made death generators. Now they are larger, slower, and almost unwieldy. The entire level is too big to fit on the DS's screens at once, and so you have to scroll around to see the entire layout of the level. In addition, there's a dead area between the two screens that the enemies love to use to fire projectiles at you. If you've played Bubble Bobble before, you know how vital it is to be able to see the entire screen. If not: it is vital to be able to see the entire screen. The compromise in Bubble Bobble Revolution is unacceptable.

The controls don't help things. I experimented with jumping diagonally and found that about half the time, the game would let you consistantly move left or right while in the air. The other half of the time, Bubblun would just stop in midair and fall straight down. Bubble Bobble requires precise controls, and precise controls these ain't. It's really, really, really, really, really, really frustrating to not be able to jump over a projectile fired from a place you can't even see.

It's even more frustrating not to be able to play through less than half of the game. Despite advertising more than 100 levels of gameplay, when (if) you make it to level 30, you will wait for a boss to appear. And wait. And wait some more. After a while you will probably get frustrated and quit, and this is the correct move - because there is no boss at level 30, despite being a "boss level." The game is inherently broken, as there is no possible way to pass level 30. Even if there was, I am not sure that I would want to. Beating the first 29 levels is frustrating enough, and not in a fun way.

The fact that the original Bubble Bobble is included on the cartridge is both a blessing and a curse. I say this because, on one hand, you can actually still play a fun game despite buying this load of trash disguised as a DS game. On the other, it detracts even more from the "new" game, because it forces you to remember how much fun the original was and how bad the "new" game is, comparatively. In addition, there is no single-cartridge multiplayer, the one thing that could have saved this abortion of a game.

Flatline - Wait for the sequel.

On the whole, this cartridge is in no way worth the money. Save your cash and buy a NES with the original Bubble Bobble, or go to Ben & Jerry's and buy lots of ice cream or something. The "new" Bubble Bobble is frustrating and not very fun to play at all, and the original is the only real reason to buy the game. One day, a company will release an updated version of Bubble Bobble that doesn't completely blow, but today is not that day.

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