And now, we shall commence in move busting.
A brief discusion following the "won't someone please think
of the children..." meeting led to the consensus that the world needed another game
starring everyone's favorite bubble blowing twin dinosaurs, Bub and Bob. We first met this
syrupy sweet duo in the game Bubble
Bobble, where they had to rescue their respective girlfriends from the clutches
of an evil monster by trapping tons of his less threatening henchmen in bubbles, and then,
popping them. The bubbles, not the evil henchmen - we're not discussing the diabolically
sadistic plot of Dig
Dug.
Several years later, when the puzzle game boom was in full swing, everyone and their uncle, and their uncle's sister's pet rat had to get some sort of Tetris clone out into the market. Some were exceptionally good, Pac Attack, Bakku Bakku, and many (too many to even list) were exceptionally mediocre. One of the best slices of the puzzle craze pie was, and still is darn it, Bust a Move.
The game play is deceptively simple: there are a bunch of colored bubbles at the top of the screen at the start of each round. As the round progressses, the bubbles drop down toward the bottom of the screen, and if they cross a line near our heroes, the game ends. Bub and Bob are placed at the bottom of the screen and have a strange bubble launching contraption at their disposal, which they use to aim the "next" bubble. Placing three bubbles of the same color so that they touch each other causes them to burst, and points are tacked on to the gamer's score.
Sounds simple enough, but, it's not quite that easy once you get started - the hallmark of a truly addictive puzzler. The two key modes in Bust a Move are the two player mode and the single player "puzzle" mode. In the single player mode, the object is to clear each round of all the bubbles before time effectively runs out. There is no time limit per se, however, after too much dilly-dallying, the bubbles quickly crowd our helpless dino-pal out of the picture. In two player mode, the action really heats up, since the objective is now to fill the other player's side of the screen with bubbles. Clearing your own screen no longer has any real value in and of itself, but the better you play, the more bubbles get sent over to your competition's side of the screen.
Titillating Tachometer: Like most of today's games, there are a handful of female characters in the supporting cast of Bust a Move. However, according to our femme fatale gaming survey, it really takes almost no cajoling on your part to get your girlfriend/wife to spend a coupla hours with you and Bust a Move. Maybe they like the cuddly little ol' dinos. Maybe they like the colorful bubbles and cartoony music. Or maybe, just maybe, they just like the prospect of really kicking your die-hard gaming ass at something they are just beginning to learn while you have already logged in over thirty three thousand hours on this title. Not that that happened to me. Oh no. Ahem.
