Puzzle Bobble Mini / Bust-A-Move Pocket review by Archon

Puzzle Bobble is a fairly well-known puzzle game that has been released in several incarnations on home and arcade machines. The game belongs to the "Tetris" type of time-limited organizational games which have become pretty much a standard feature on every home system and are nearly ideal games for a portable unit. It's no coincidence that Tetris pretty much sold the Gameboy for most of its early black-and-white years: a portable unit is really made for the type of game you can turn on whenever you have free time. Puzzle Bobble fits this category nicely, and though it has a few faults, is recommended for anyone who has the system.

Puzzle Bobble, as mentioned above, is basically an organizational game like Tetris. You have Bub, or Bob (I can't remember which) turning a pointer at the bottom of the screen. You aim and fire bubbles upward at a mass of multicolor bubbles already on the screen; getting three or more bubbles of the same color touching each other causes those bubbles to pop. If the popping bubbles were the sole support of other bubbles of any color, those bubbles drop off the screen; dropping a lot of bubbles at a time causes (in vs. modes) your opponent to have extra bubbles dropped on his side. Having any bubble cross the line at the bottom of the screen causes your (or your opponent's) death. The strategy in the vs modes mostly revolves around 1) placing bubbles of similar colors close to each other so you can get rid of them easily, while 2) placing bubbles (of whatever color) attached to those similar color bubbles in such a way so you can knock off huge bunches of them at a time, without letting them extend so far down that you lose.

The computer AI in VS mode is not that great, but there are eight different opponents, and each requires a different strategy because they all have different starting bubble patterns. I thought the computer VS was a good addition to the game, especially since it seems to me that you can also set the computer skill level to one of eight levels. Puzzle mode is good, but you normally can burn through it pretty fast, most have one or two tricks and some just require good bubble management. Survival mode is good practice, but it's simply not as visceral as VS mode, though you can get a performance rating in this mode.

I haven't played Tsunagete Pon!, but I'll compare this game to Magical Drop. MD is very dependent upon the logical speed of the gamer; that is, you get to control how fast you move things around, and pure speed and ability to create "rensa" or combinations rules. You decide exactly where each piece will go and you don't really make mistakes that you can't fix; you can only be too slow to think of and implement your strategy successfully. PB, however, introduces skill into the game; just because you THINK it would be good strategy to put a bubble in the upper right hand corner next to the two orange bubbles doesn't mean that you CAN successfully hit that spot with your multiposition pointer. In fact, you may notice that when you are winning, (i.e. your screen is almost clear of bubbles) you will have real trouble with accuracy while it is easier to aim when things are closer. Later on, when your pit is very full, it becomes very difficult to aim again because you must rely on bouncing bubbles off of the walls. I think it's this analog vs digital, skill vs logic thing that makes PB as popular with girls as it is with guys.

The graphics, sound, and music are adequate and not at all spectacular, but who cares? You would buy this game for the gameplay or not at all. The music was fitting and very similar to the other games in the series. Graphics consist mainly of small sprite characters, a pointer, and the bubbles. The pointer is excellent, you will pull off moves just like on the bigger versions of this game. One correction: many screen shots show glowing green or orange colored backgrounds. To my knowledge, all of the backgrounds are black and do not look horrible like those shots.

Final warning: OK, maybe it's just me, but I think it is HARD to tell the difference between the pink and orange bubbles, to the point where I was getting eye strain. After owning the game for a while your eyes adjust and you can tell the difference, but every once in a while I still make a mistake. I finally found out that it's not just bright light, but SUNLIGHT that seems to bring the colors into focus much better than incandescent light. So just a gentle caveat: it's well worth your money, but be patient with the game when you lodge your first pink bubble next to two orange ones; it does get easier eventually.