Besides the Space Invader, Bub (Or Bubblin, if you will) from the Bubble Bobble games is the closest thing Taito has to a mascot. It all started will Bubble Bobble and burst from there: we saw Bub and Bob in their human forms in the Rainbow Islands game, there were increasingly obscure sequels like Parasol Stars and Bubble Symphony.
Later, in 1994, Taito introduced the Puzzle Bobble games or as I knew them at the time "Bust-A-Move". Yeah, there was always a degree of naming confusion with these games. And to complicate things even further, "Puzzle Bobble" was originally called "Puzzle Blaster". “Bust-A-Move" is such a non-indicative name. It almost sounds like you’re playing a disco-dancing rhythm game, not an action-puzzle game!
To the uninitiated, Puzzle Bobble is a match-three puzzle game, like Columns or Dr. Mario. But rather the game being about clearing gems, or blocks or.. pills, it's all about launching matching colored bubbles laid out in honeycomb formations into each other to cause massive chain reactions. This simple little game launched on the Taito B System in 1994, but myself and many others saw it everywhere as part of a Neo Geo MVS unit. It was like the plague. But I mean, the good kind of plague! Bust-a-Move was in every arcade, pizza shop and corner store. This game better had more representation than the original arcade classic and would prove to be more ubiquitous than it.
So, a year later, Taito made Puzzle Bobble 2 for their Taito F3 System. I love the F3 games, but I gotta concede, in retrospect the F3 feels like an attempt by Taito to compete with SNK, whose Neo Geo hardware was already giving their own game success. It’s an odd situation of competing with a competitor who’s giving your kid a home. I don’t get it. The graphics received a big update, (I prefer the look of Puzzle Bobble 2) and the game has a branching A-Z path system, similar to Darius (also by Taito) that makes for different endings for Bub’s journey across Puzzle World.
Puzzle Bobble 2X for Taito F3
In the States, the US got a highly altered version of Puzzle Bubble 2: it was called Bust-A-Move Again. Even though Puzzle Bobble/Bust-A-Move was a hit all over the world, Taito thought it was necessary to drastically alter the graphics of the game. The core gameplay was still intact, but Bub and his brother Bob are gone, and so are all the Bubble Bobble characters we know and love. Their sprites were replaced with... disembodied hands and the backgrounds were replaced with photorealistic graphics of the Earth and Space. The music was also altered for whatever reason.
Bust-A-Move Again remains poorly documented. It’s not on Wikipedia; none of the retro arcades I contacted have it. The old ROM dumps of the game were bad in that they could not recreate the sound properly. There was a version on Taito Legends 2 (by Mine Loader Software and Destineer) that is functional but has audio problems: the sound data is actually reused from Puzzle Bobble 2 (with a song from the game missing.) The audio tracks do not loop properly leaving several stages in uncomfortable silence. This version is functional. but with the audio taking a hit, the soul isn’t there.
There was a Nintendo 64 version of Puzzle Bobble 2 called Bust-A-Move 2: Arcade Edition which recreates the arcade visuals to the best of its ability, but the sound quality isn’t up to standard. 4 years later, in 1999, Puzzle Bobble 2 would be ported to Neo Geo MVS and this version is what’s available on Nintendo Switch. I highly recommend it, I think it’s as much fun as you can have without, you know buying a Neo Geo or trying to find it at an arcade.
The totally unappealing Artwork on the Acclaim version of Bust-A-Move 2 (Bust-A-Move 2: Arcade Edition)
So in the mid 90‘s, Taito of America shut down. In the interim, Taito games were coming out under other publishers. For a years, Acclaim had a monopoly on the Bubble Bobble and Puzzle Bobble games and... now is the time to insert some cliches about judging a book by its cover or how “what’s on the inside is what really counts”, because the art that was coming out of the Acclaim published Bust-A-Move games was just awful.
So, Puzzle Bobble 3/Bust-A-Move 3 came out in 1996, again for Taito F3 in the arcades, the home version was on Sega Saturn, PS1, N64... and this one shook things up a bit. The way the chain reactions from the bubbles coming down was a little bit different. The art style distinguished itself from the other two games, Bub and Bob had a few new friends and I find some of the voices and music to be pretty annoying in this one. Sounds like a weird carnival.
Puzzle Bobble 4, last one for Taito F3, introduced more new friends for Bub and Bob. I own this on PS1 as Bust a Move 4. And man, these load times are killer. But check out all of Bub and Bob’s new friends.
Taito moved forward with Super Puzzle Bobble/ Super Bust-A-Move and Super Bust-A-Move 2 for sixth-generation home consoles, famously appearing on the PlayStation 2. The US boxart is still notorious, the story mode is lengthy, and I'd say this is the hardest the series has ever been.
In 2001, the Azumanga girls got their own Puzzle Bobble. This one was never released in the US, though. After The Square-Enix buyout, there was Bust-A-Move on Wii and on DS. My experience with them is minimal. In short, I didn’t think they were very good; the Wii game was way too long and the art was poor. This duo isn't well regarded from what I've seen.
The 3DS Puzzle Bobble game released in 2011 essentially killed the series. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways to go out and discover the series! They're on PS4, Switch, and Mobile!
