Bubble Bobble stuff

Bubble Bobble came out in 1986, a very hectic time for platform games. Still a fairly young genre, very few conventions had been laid down, and various wildly different styles, from Mario to Contra, were trying to shape the future for video games. When Bubble Bobble is still remembered fondly as one of the most popular video games ever, it is not just because it's a great game, but also because it was among the genre defining mothers of the arcade platformer.
While Super Mario Bros. for the NES had already revolutionized video games with its incredibly tight controls for its time, Bubble Bobble's main attraction was of course the simultaneous two player co-op mode, harking back to the original arcade Mario Bros. from 1983, but improving immensely on the formula in pretty much every way imaginable.

What truly made the game stand out though, is not one single major feature, but an incredible amount of details that all work together to form one of the most replayable video games ever created.
Taito had already laid the groundwork for this the year earlier with the lesser known Fairyland Story. A fairly simplistic game about killing all the enemies on a single non-scrolling screen, only to move on to the next. Rather than simply jumping on the enemies or shooting them, as was popular at the time, the witch Ptolemy had to turn her enemies into cakes, and use them to crush the other enemies. Combo up multiple enemies at the same time for extra scoring opportunities - a simple mechanic that takes what would normally be a simple action game into more of a puzzle game.

Bubble Bobble expands on this mechanic, and manages to make it both hell of a lot deeper, but also vastly more intuitive. Despite the fact that pretty much no other game series exists with a similar mechanic, the moment you realise that you can spit bubbles at the enemies, and you see the three simple guys you face on the first stage automatically group together once bubbled, you already know all the basics.
1. Turn guys into bubbles.
2. Group as many of them together as possible
3. Enjoy your exponentially growing score bonus.

Of course, as you progress further into the game, many new factors start to show up. This was a game designed to persuade kids into continously sharing their personal findings and strategies in the schoolyard as new hidden aspects were discovered. And it worked. There are a LOT of these things to find. One of the more obvious secrets is when you clear a stage, and you are unexplicably awarded with every remaining bubble on the screen turning into a 700 point item. People quickly found out that the score counter was the secret to this. By aligning two digits in your score, you can force this effect on basically any stage.

Whether Taito originally intended for people to manipulate the game like this, or simply used the scores as a lazy way to achieve a "random" effect could probably be disputed, but it turns out to work as a great addition to the gameplay. The score can easily be aligned by blowing bubbles into the wall for 10 points each, and while the more hectic stages can be difficult to control, others will easily allow for huge point bonuses.

The rabbit hole goes way deeper than this simple mechanic though! It turns out that almost every "random" occurance in the game is somehow based on player input. On every single stage, a score item and a special item will appear. The score item is based on how fast you completed the previous stage, while the special item depends on a bunch of different factors. For example, once you have jumped 35 times, a candy that lets you blow bubbles faster will apear, and the running shoes will appear once you have walked a certain distance. While these permanent powerups (well, permanent until you get hit...) are very useful, other items will help you clear out a stage, earn a huge amount of points, or both.

While this means that the appearance of every special item is completely deterministic, over the course of a long game, things will inevitably be scrambled up quite a bit. This is helped by the fact that these counters all carry over between games. While a bit of strategy can help you control where you will get the umbrella that lets you skip over multiple stages on the home versions of the game, you don't get the same luxury in an arcade where the game has been running all day.
On the surface, it would seem that this mechanic makes comparing high scores a bit unfair, but play long enough to see the counters reset multiple times, and this will also serve to even things out. At the end of the day, a savvy player knowing how to affect the game in his favor will always come out with the highest score. The items that appear based on how many bubbles you blow will obviously appear a lot, while the ones that make huge diamonds appear will be fairly rare, due to their individual preconditions. Playing the game over and over again, all of your games will be quite similar on the surface, but the distribution of various helpful items will continue to make your experience differ - maybe one run will give you a screen clearing item on a round that normally gives you problems, or maybe another will give you an incredible score item forcing you to go for a pickup that you would normally pass over, entirely shaking up the way you tackle individual rounds. Even playing the game over and over a hundred times, it remains likely that you will come across an item you have never seen before.

This is a mechanic that Taito chose to replicate in every single sequel to Bubble Bobble, from Rainbow Islands to Bubble Memories, and in each of these games it serves the same purpose. While special items could be picked entirely from a random number generator, the choice of making them completely deterministic both retains the experience of having your game progression mixed up a bit, while at the same time maintaining the competitive nature of a high score based video game - you can't just have a "lucky run" where every single screen is cleared by a favourable powerup, because every time you play the game, the same factors will play in.


So let's take a few steps back. We have talked enough about the technical aspects of how the game works, but how about the game itself? Essentially you can still jump in and not care about any of this. Just bubble the enemies until they die and move on. Eventually you will still see most of the available bonuses, as long as you manage to stay alive long enough. But there is a lot to keep in mind, if you want to maximize your score. Let's look at everything you need to consider in order to stay alive and get that highscore.

1. Don't get hit! While this is a pretty obvious tactic for almost any game, your score actually depends on it. Not only do you lose any powerup you have picked up once you lose a guy, making the game much harder to pick back up - stay alive until round 20 and a door will appear taking you to a bonus room awarding you a massive amount of points.
Stay alive until rounds 30 and 40, and you will be awarded by two more bonus rooms. Doing this takes a bit of practice, but the game only gets harder from this point on, so there is a long way to go! At round 50 another secret door will take you to round 70, making it easier to beat the game, but giving up on 20 rounds of score potential in the process.

2. Align your score. We already talked about this. While some times a bit difficult to control, having rapid fire bubbles will make this a lot easier. There's a trick to it, though. When popping the last enemy on the screen, make sure no empty bubbles are touching it, as they will upset your score, but at the same time you want as many bubbles as possible to be on the screen, as each of them will turn into points.
The difficulty of this depends very much on the stage you are on. Different stages have different flow of bubbles, as well as the amount of time that will pass before an enemy escapes. Optimal conditions will allow you to score upwards of 15,000 points from the bubble bonuses alone.

3. Group enemies together. Ideally you will be able to pop seven enemies a the same time, which is the most you will see on any stage. Four or five enemies are more common, netting you 8,000 or 16,000 points respectively, while a few stages allow for more. Most obviously round 28 will easily allow you to group seven Mightas together for 64,000 points. More enemies also results in better point pickups, with a seven-combo adding up to a total of 21,500 points.
Even better, though. Grouping enemies together like this, will also result in more letters appearing in bubbles. Getting all six letters, E, X, T, E, N and D will give you a 1up and skip the current stage. On top of that, collecting the same letters multiple times causes canes to appear as special items - collecting these will in turn cause a huge point item to drop from the ceiling once you complete the current round, giving you an additional score between 10,000 and 30,000.
That's a lot of numbers! Don't think too hard about it though, all it means is that while there are many other good ways to get points, being able to group the enemies together should always take priority. Unfortunately, that's a lot easier on some stages than others. In many stages, the enemies will escape from their bubbles so fast it's difficult to even pop more than one at a time. In these situations, you would do best to prioritize survival over points, which brings us to what is ultimately the most important thing you should do:

4. Learn every stage. Every single one of them. Bubble Bobble is an action game, sure. Mastering the controls, knowing the quirks of the bubbles and the patterns of the enemies are all extremely important aspects. More importantly, though, a knowledge of every stage and how it unfolds, will make tough stages simpler, easy stages even more exploitable, and survival much more guaranteed.
The mechanics of Bubble Bobble truly manage to show off their ingenious design when you really delve into the game and discover how subtle differences in the level design can create wildly different gameplay experiences. This game is as much a puzzle game as a platformer, and many stages - especially later on - require a very specific tactic in order to even stand a chance. Maybe the developers intentionally designed a stage to encourage you to take out the enemies using special fire, water or lightning bubbles, while others simply require you to react quickly before the enemies get to start moving. Meanwhile, certain stages are designed completely towards two players helping eachother out - dividing the enemies between you both, one player blowing bubbles for the other to ride, or maybe bubbling the enemies in one area will deliver them as a group for the other to pop.

Almost every stage has its own gimmick, and playing them over and over again, you get to learn them by heart. You will know how to get the most points out of every stage, you will know how to get more 1ups, and you will know how to survive when things get tough. You will know when you can afford to take risks, and when you should play it safe. And you will want to play it over and over again, until it is etched into your spine.


Bubble Bobble really shines when you play it with a friend who knows the game as well as you do. Of course, it makes the game a lot easier, but it also means you have to share your points with your friend, making them as much of an opponent as they are your partner. Rushing to pick up the oversized popsicles, or stealing the running shoes from another player is something everyone who spent time with Bubble Bobble has experienced.