The biggest offenders in this department are the bubbles themselves - there are plenty of colors available, yet many bubbles are colored in using stipple shading. While we salute the more-than-impressive effort made to fit the intricate designs of the arcade original onto the tiny GBC screen, the lack of color is off-putting. There's absolutely no reason why this game couldn't have one.

The first and most glaring omission is the lack of a two-player mode. Despite this disappointing gameplay loophole there's plenty of fun to be had when you rack up extra lines of bubbles that are added to your opponent's pile by clearing many bubbles at once.īust A Move 4 has a fair number of letdowns, we're sad to report. However, it's easy to force the opponent to lose simply by taking your time with every shot. Once that's done you're thrown into a head-to-head match with a Game Boy-controlled opponent, and for the most part it puts up a decent challenge. At the start of each game you can choose what character to be, and each one has a different range of bubbles that will most likely appear during the game. These two are fine but offer no great incentive to continue playing besides a harder challenge later on. Challenge plays in a similar style in fact, it's almost like a baby puzzle mode. After clearing a stage you can choose what level to go on to via a map screen. The first is the one most Puzzle Bobble/Bust A Move arcade players will be familiar with: Keep clearing screens until you lose. Three game variations are available - puzzle, vs. Special bubbles increase the game's variety: Glue bubbles remain on the screen taking up space until all the bubbles above them are destroyed clone bubbles remain neutral and can't be cleared until bubbles they are connected to pop and gems destroy all bubbles of a particular color once hit. Each level must be cleared before the bubbles inevitably descend to the bottom row of the screen, in which case it's game over. These of course result in huge point bonuses later on. Any bubbles that are hanging off them disappear, too, so there's plenty of opportunity for smart combinations and quick screen clearances. If you connect three or more like-hued bubbles together, they pop. This is done by firing more bubbles up into the pile from your cannon at the bottom of the screen, which can be directed through 180 degrees.

The objective of Bust A Move 4, as it always has been, is to clear the screen of differently colored bubbles. For the most part, this conversion has worked out well, but there are a few annoyances that prevent Bust A Move 4 from achieving classic status. The game features the two dinosaur protagonists (Bob and Bub) as well as other characters from Bubble Bobble, even though the two games have distinctly different gameplay.Taito's bubble-popping puzzle game has been around in one form or another for half a decade now, and it's one of those games that seems perfect for the handheld format. Whenever a player successfully disposes of a bubble group, a part of it is transferred onto the opponent's part of the screen. Each player competes on an area occupying half of the screen, dealing with identically generated bubbles. Should the player fail to release the bubbles within a specific time limit, they will be released automatically, unaffected by the pointer's aiming.Ī two-player mode is included as well. If the ceiling of the area is covered by too many bubbles, it will gradually descend the game is over when it nearly reaches the player-controlled pointer. When such bubbles form a group of three or more, they pop and disappear from the screen. The goal is to aim the bubbles in such a way that they will touch identically colored ones. Depending on the aiming, the bubbles may float up directly or bounce off the walls, changing their trajectory. Description Bust-A-Move (also known as Puzzle Bobble) is a real-time puzzle game in which the player controls a device called 'pointer' at the bottom of the screen, aiming and releasing randomly colored bubbles upwards.

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