Bust-A-Move

[steaner]

Puzzle Bobble (known as Bust-A-Move here in the States) is one of the best match-three puzzle games and has appeared on every system imaginable since the Super Nintendo. Not every new version is great, but the core game has survived all these years because of its addictive, simple formula and adorable dinosaur mascots. The latest edition of Puzzle Bobble has popped up on the Japanese WiiWare and, as Puzzle Bobble enthusiasts, we've been putting it through the motions. We're happy to report that this appears to be one of the good Puzzle Bobbles, with solid controls, lots of power-ups, and a fun head-to-head mode.

Your download gets you a single-player progression to work through and a local multiplayer mode for two puzzlers. The single-player mode is presented in alphabetical tiers as we've seen in previous releases. Starting from "A," once you complete the first round of challenges you can choose to move onto "B" or "C," and so on until you reach the end of the alphabet and complete the game. This adds replay value as it will take you several play throughs to visit every lettered tier.

Not every Puzzle Bobble game is good. This looks to be one of the good ones, though.

In each stage, you control a canon at the bottom of the screen which you can aim in 180 degrees in order to shoot colored bubbles at a cluster of orbs above. Match at least three and the group will disappear, and the stage is complete when you've gotten rid of all bubbles. But time is against you and the cluster is ever being pushed downwards towards your canon. If it reaches the bottom, you lose.

Battle Mode lets you go at it head-to-head against either the computer or another player. Dropping large numbers of bubbles will create combos and send junk over to the other player's side. Before starting a game you can choose from several kinds of "attacks" that will screw up your opponent in various ways. The lack of online multiplayer is disappointing, but we've been having fun playing on one screen.

The various special bubbles that have appeared in Puzzle Bobble over the years are present here. A fire bubble will explode and take out any bubbles in its vicinity. The bowling ball will charge through an entire cluster of bubbles in a straight line. What's missing is the variety of characters we've been able to choose from in the past. It looks like only the dinosaur brothers Bub and Bob are included here. The music isn't the classic Puzzle Bobble tune we remember, either. In its place is some generic, standard videogame midi.

Earlier this year Taito and Square Enix delivered Space Invaders Get Even to WiiWare. It was a fun new take on the Space Invaders franchise, but was marred by the fact that the initial $5 download was a skeleton of a game and we were then expected to pay for more levels (adding up to $20 total). Something similar has been worked into Puzzle Bobble Wii although it's not as disappointing. We do have a lengthy single-player progression and head-to-head mode included in the first download, which is probably all we would expect from Puzzle Bobble. But there is a shop menu in the game where we can download extra content. Two DLC packs go for 200 points each and they appear to be a selection of levels from Super Puzzle Bobbles 1, 2, and 3. This feels more like extra content than the rip-off that was Space Invaders Get Even. The initial Puzzle Bobble Wii download is 800 points, so for a total of 1200 points you can get a nice amount of content.

From what we've played so far this looks to be a great downloadable Puzzle Bobble game. Square Enix hasn't announced plans to release the game in the States, yet. But the publisher brings out a lot of Taito's games here so we're keeping our hopes up for an announcement soon.