BUBBLE BOBBLE 

 Taito's BUBBLE BOBBLE is a cute arcade game, and one of the few
that's really designed for children. Yet it's challenging for even
the most jaded or experienced adult gamers, as well.  

 BUBBLE BOBBLE can be played in either one- or two-player mode (I
recommend the latter). You are two dinosaurs, Bub and Bob, and your
goal is to capture and demolish various beasties. You do this first
by blowing bubbles at the beasties, then by bursting them once
they're trapped inside. You play across a series of 100 different
mazes, each as complicated and ingenious as anything you'll find in
ARKANOID. Every maze is harder than the previous one, and you'll
need many different strategies to proceed from maze to maze. 

 When you burst the beasties, they turn into various delicious
objects: bananas, oranges, lemons, watermelons, cherries, 
pineapples, and others. Scoring is achieved by getting Bub and Bob
to eat the fruit before it disappears. Sometimes desserts appear as
well, in the form of ice cream sundaes. 

 While you're after the beasties (about 20-30 different kinds, with
increasing variety as you get farther along the game), other bubbles
and targets show up from time to time. There are Fire, Thunder, and
Water bubbles; bursting any of them when they appear helps you to
capture and burst the beasties. There are also "Timing Targets" 
(which change the pace of the maze), and "Magic Targets" (which
consist of various power-ups, such as increases in speed, 
bubble-blowing distance, bombs, resistance to beastie attacks, 
etc.). 

 If you don't burst the bubbles in which the beasties remain
captive, they eventually break their way out and come roaring after
you at double-speed, obviously anxious for revenge. If the beasties
get to you _before_ you trap them in a bubble, you lose a life. You
can run right and left across the screen, and jump up and down the
maze platforms, to avoid or pursue the beasties. 

 Along with everything else, you sometimes find a bunch of bubbles
that have letters on them. If you can burst the correct bubbles and
spell the word EXTEND (vertically to the left of the maze), you move
automatically to the next level and earn an extra life. 

 If you take too long in one level of BUBBLE BOBBLE, a dangerous
creature by the name of Baron von Blubba appears (s/he looks like
Moby Dick on a tear with a toothache). You have to avoid this one at
all costs, until you've cleared the maze of the rest of the
beasties. 

 The game is surprisingly non-violent, for all the bubbling and
bursting and chasing that goes on. The background music is
appropriately sweet, reminiscen of the music played on carousels in
amusement parks. Unfortunately, it becomes a bit irritating after a
while, and you can't turn it off. I played BUBBLE BOBBLE on an Amiga
500 with 1 MB of RAM; it requires only 512k, and works with any
Amiga-compatible joysticks plugged into ports 1 and 2. The program
is copy-protected. 

 BUBBLE BOBBLE is not a particularly unique game when it comes to
basic gameplay. The dinosaur/bubble/beastie idea is great, but this
is ultimately just another "mazes and ladders" game. However, Taito
has done everything possible to assure playability, so for children
new to arcade gaming, this game will probably be their best
introduction. Don't expect excitement, though, from those who've
played lots of similar games already. BUBBLE BOBBLE is designed in
the ARKANOID mold (complete with opening pseudo-space story), and
feels similar to that game in terms of the creativity of maze
variety. But it's much less addictive, and it's definitely no
ARKANOID clone. 

 Don't expect BUBBLE BOBBLE to be a demonstration of the superiority
of computer game systems over 8-bit cartridge game systems, either. 
While I suspect the music quality in the Amiga version is an
improvement over that on the Nintendo System, for the most part, the
game looks about the same as it would on the latter. This is another
way of saying that if you have a Nintendo and an Amiga, I don't
think you'll be missing much by getting the cartridge instead of the
disk. 

 If, on the other hand, your only game machine is your computer, and
you'd like to introduce your small child to the fun of videogames, 
BUBBLE BOBBLE is the perfect place to start. It's attractive in many
ways, and will please parent and child alike. 

 BUBBLE BOBBLE is published and distributed by Taito. 

*****DOWNLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS  (304) 744-2253