Well, ok, good question. I can see why you younger kids would ask that, I guess there's a couple of reasons.

  • Playability - this game just oozes playability, simply demands to be played, and it's tough too. None of this easy game shit that comes out all too often on the Playstation. Pure old-skool gameplay.

  • Co-operation - bubbling with a buddy who knows the game makes it a joy to play, some levels depend on co-operation heavily... until the big cake falls down the screen.

  • Style - odd one, but the game is typically Japanese, and I love that. Saccharine sweet tunes and kid like icons make it a big hit for me.

  • I own a Bubble Bobble arcade machine - 'nuff said


...and basically it just reminds me of great times I had playing games on old home computers with my friends, definitely a part of my childhood, and definitely a reason I work with computers and the internet today.

 

  
       
         
 


I fell for this game way back when the Commodore 64 version came out. My best mate Ade bought it and we played the game for months (probably just weeks to be honest, but it felt like months) and the pair of us actually managed to finish it.
That was quite an achievement back in the 8 bit computing days, because the computer invariably crashed on the last level of whatever game you were playing (other games I nearly finished before the computer interrupted include Robin o' the Wood, Wizball and Skool Daze).
I also thoroughly enjoyed Rainbow Islands and the New Zealand Story, both Taito games, both very much in the Bubble Bobble mould.

A few years later, my friend Rob and I used to hop on a train over to Southport and spend whatever allowance we had at the arcades there. There were some good machines around (for Southport) but, unsurprisingly enough, Bubble Bobble always had a major attraction for me.

So I bought the Playstation version when it came out, and, good as it was, I just couldn't understand why it wasn't a perfect port. Can't have been that bloody difficult could it? Well, there weren't any polygons in it, so...

Next chance to play the game in all it's glory came about with the advent of MAME (Multi Arcade Machine Emulator). This emulator, available for mac and pc, runs many hundreds of old arcade roms, so what you play IS the arcade version of your favourite game.
Great! So there I was with the exact rom dump of Bubble Bobble (and a couple of hundred other games) playing away quite happily on my iMac.


  
       
         
 
I'm a complete gaming nut, I also collect consoles, owning around 25 of them, ranging from a couple of Atari 2600's to a Sega Dreamcast. Since I've got a good job, an understanding girlfriend, and a house of my own to hoard all the crap, I've amassed quite a collection, but as any hard-core gamer knows, owning an arcade something to aspire to... can you see where I'm going with this? So, for Christmas 1999, Kathryn, my girlfriend, bought me a Bubble Bobble arcade machine!

After visitng some of the other Bubble Bobble sites on the Internet, I noticed that a lot of them had out-dated links or the usual 404 Not Found crap. Bit of a shame really, so I intend to try and keep the most up-to-date fan site online...