Bust-A-Move is a puzzle game released in arcades in 1994 by Taito. It is based on the older game Bubble Bobble and uses the same cute characters and style. The game’s fun bubble-matching gameplay, colorful look, and catchy music made it very popular and led to many sequels and home versions including on the Super Nintendo/Super Famicom.
Bust-A-Move is a classic game you could find in almost every arcade. At first, people might think it looks like a Dr. Mario copy with cute dinosaur characters. But once they start playing, most people quickly get hooked on this fun and addictive classic.
The Story
Will your focus break first, or the level you are trying to clear?
In Bust-A-Move, it’s not just about aiming and shooting bubbles at the ceiling. You need to think ahead and plan your moves carefully. Match three or more bubbles to clear them, and keep winning round after round if you want to beat all the tricky, bubble-popping challenges.
The Graphics and Sound
The graphics in this game are bright and colorful.
The marbles look nice, and the little dinosaurs look just like they did in Bubble Bobble. The backgrounds are clear and not distracting, which is important in a puzzle game.
What makes it even better is that the backgrounds change every few stages. This keeps the game from looking boring. Many of the backgrounds have a tropical style and lots of different colors, which makes the game feel fresh and fun to look at.
Overall, the visuals are lively and a nice break from the dark and plain look of other puzzle games like Tetris.
The music here can feel very childish and annoying.
Even though this game has more variety in its music, it still sounds overly playful and repetitive. For some players, it can get irritating very quickly instead of being fun.
The sound effects are a bit better, but still not great. The little dinosaur characters make loud, cutesy noises at the start of each stage, which can be just as annoying as the music. If you do not like childish or cartoon-style sounds, this game’s audio can be hard to enjoy.
The Gameplay
This is a simple but very addictive puzzle game.
You shoot colored marbles from the bottom of the screen toward a group of marbles at the top. Your goal is to match three marbles of the same color. When you do, they disappear. If the marbles reach the ground, you lose. You always have one marble ready to shoot. You must aim it at marbles of the same color. For example, if you have a yellow marble, you try to hit other yellow marbles. Matching three in a row makes them fall.
You can also score big combos. If a few marbles are holding up many others, breaking the right ones can cause a large group to fall at once and give you more points. At the same time, the marbles slowly move downward, so you are always racing against time.
There are also special marbles:
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Lightning clears a whole row.
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Fire explodes and clears marbles in a circle.
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Water changes nearby marbles into the same color.
The controls in this game are very simple, which is a good thing.
All you do is move the arrow to aim where you want the bubble to go, then press a button to shoot. That’s it. There are no complicated controls, and you don’t even need to use many of the buttons on the Super Nintendo controller.
The game has several modes:
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Arcade Mode: Clear marbles stage by stage.
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Challenge Mode: Marbles don’t move down, but new rows appear from the top.
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Two Player Mode: Compete to clear marbles faster and even mess up the other player.
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Options Mode: Change basic game settings.
Simple idea, but very fun to play making the replay value excellent.
My Verdict
Bust-A-Move is better than Tetris and many other puzzle games in many ways.
Other game types can get boring after a while, but this puzzle game stays fun. Even if you finish it many times, you will still want to come back and play again because it is always challenging and entertaining.
Play it on the iconic Super Nintendo/Super Famicom or play it on a preferred emulator.
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