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 Atari ST conversion is almost identical to the coin-op version (but with a little bit slower action). Technically speaking, only the Sharp X68000 conversion is practically an arcade perfect conversion to the original, but still the Atari ST here offers an enjoyable and very close to the original title. Each level is a classic platform with different colors (16 on screen here), 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. Sound and music are similarly effective, especially the latter which is well matched to the game's atmosphere and probably some of the most memorable tunes found in the video games' history!
CPU: Motorola 68000 16/32bit at 8mhz. 16 bit data bus/32 bit internal/24-bit address bus. MEMORY: RAM 512KB (1MB for the 1040ST models) / ROM 192KB GRAPHICS: Digital-to-Analog Converter of 3-bits, eight levels per RGB channel, featuring a 9-bit RGB palette (512 colors), 320x200 (16 color), 640x200 (4 color), 640x400 (monochrome). With special programming techniques could display 512 colors on screen in static images. SOUND: Yamaha YM2149F PSG "Programmable Sound Generator" chip provided 3-voice sound synthesis, plus 1-voice white noise mono PSG. It also has two MIDI ports, and support mixed YM2149 sfx and MIDI music in gaming (there are several games supported this).