Burst your Bubble…
Bubble Bobble is still without a doubt, one of my favorite NES games of all time, a cartridge I still have to this very day, even if the console to play it on rarely ever works. While there have been a few sequels and spin-offs across the past few decades, few of these titles seemed to capture the game’s original spirit. Bubble Bobble 4 Friends released earlier this year on the Nintendo Switch, the first real Bubble Bobble game in several years, and has now seen a content update with The Baron is Back, adding new levels and content to the game for free. While the game itself is charming enough, its presentation, level design, and overall feel certainly make it feel very different than that of what we’ve had in the past. While I still certainly prefer the original to this modern adaptation, I still feel it earns its place in the series as a decent enough to often enjoyable entry.
The initial release of Bubble Bobble 4 Friends was lacking in content all around, especially at the $49.99 CAD asking price. The game, which could be completed in just a few short hours, didn’t offer up much to warrant that price, no matter how enjoyable its four-player shenanigans could be. The game offered 100 levels, even if most of them were just harder duplicates of half of the available levels, featuring new enemy placements and significantly more challenge. It also contained the original arcade game, albeit the fun there was still limited to the original’s 2 player functionality. The remaining game could be played in 4 player co-op, with unlimited continues, and even an invincibility mode should you die just a bit too often, and you likely will.
From a gameplay point of view, Bubble Bobble 4 Friends is decent enough, even if It took me a while to come to grips with the feel of the jump and I also found the analog sticks to cause my characters to spring back a bit too easily, often turning my character around when I didn’t want them to. Swapping to the d-pad did fix things, but there’s just something off about how the little dragon’s jumping around felt that I haven’t been able to convey into words; it just feels off. It was also very easy to lose your character in much of the action as the screen can get rather busy at times. I also found some levels to zoom out or zoom in just a bit too much, making it a bit harder to confidently judge your jumps or dodge some of the incoming foes as they bounce or move around. It wasn’t anything that couldn’t be adapted to, but the lack of a consistent level size did tend to make some levels drastically better than others. I’ll also point out that some levels just had enemies sit there, not moving, simply waiting to be scooped up into a bubble and popped, with little to no resistance.
The Baron is Back update adds another 100 new stages to the game as a free update, and finally launched on the PlayStation 4, as the original game was exclusive to the Switch for much of this year. The game’s biggest new addition is the Baron is Back mode, accessed through the Arcade of Memories through the hard difficulty menu. Now, at first glance, this content was difficult to track down as it’s not made clear on how you access it, and I’ve even seen a review where they talk about not even seeing the Baron once, meaning they were not able to even find this mode. When you complete the main game, you’ll unlock hard mode, and in place of the original game’s arcade cabinet, you can swap to the new mode, a series of new levels via a tower that is vastly harder than the other available content in the game. While the main campaign is largely a breeze, these new levels are drastically harder in comparison, making it often at odds with what this game is trying to accomplish here for both nostalgic players and younger children.
Where you could continue to your heart’s content in the base game’s modes, you don’t have that luxury here, as all players will share in the available ten lives. Once you die, you’re put back to the title screen and simply look to jump back in and try again. Thankfully, you can practice any levels you’ve already completed, so it does offer you a chance to get used to some of the more difficult levels, giving you an edge during your next attempt. Now, I mentioned that the base game had some zoomed in and zoomed out levels that varied in their size, and many of these new levels are just far too zoomed in, not really giving you much movement around them, and many of the new levels feel like you have drastic limits on how you’re able to complete them, often coming across as needing to find that perfect path. It’s a shame, since this dungeon-type floor concept is more akin to the original, even transitioning from level to level just as it was done in the original, apart from a prompt tallying your score between levels, which I wish could be turned off.
During the base game’s campaign, you’ll push through a series of environments that are built upon worlds. Each world represents an area in a child’s room. Each world has a series of levels that end in a boss encounter, granting you a power-up that you can equip to your dragon once you’ve earned it. These power-ups let you shoot bubble further, blow electrical or bomb bubbles, or stop the currents of wind as you tailor it to your advantage. Each power-up can only be used a certain amount of times, making you snag fruit from a downed foe to replenish it. The power-ups are a nice touch and give you a decent amount of variety, especially when you are playing with friends. As you collect the E-X-T-E-N-D letters through each stage, you can increase the number of uses you can carry with you, making each power-up more effective. It’s a smart design to prolong the life of some levels as you jump back in to collect any missing letters. Now, hard mode ups this by making those letters disappear faster, so it’s best to understand how each level works to get the most out of the game.
Bubble Bobble 4 Friends largely plays like the original, and yet doesn’t at the same time. You still shoot out bubbles to trap enemies, having them move around the map via the wind currents, forcing you to reach that area to then pop them. You can pop them one by one, or if they are collected in a group, then popping them en masse. This gameplay aspect of the game is still as satisfying as ever, but there are also changes to how the game feels from the original that I am not sold on. Instead of holding down the jump button to hop atop bubbles, you can now just bounce on them, pressing down to then pop through them. It’s not a big change that had me annoyed at it, but it certainly took some getting used to, especially after playing through much of the original before I dived into this new version. If you die, at least in co-op, your Dragon will appear in a bubble for a short period of time. While it was easy enough to run to my downed companion in some of the smaller wide-open levels, some of the more intricate ones meant that I had no chance to reach them in time. It’s a shame you couldn’t navigate to your friends inside the bubble, even slowly, to give them at least that extra second of time to save you.
I’ll also stress that some of the levels didn’t seem designed around many of the upgrades, making some of them largely useless unless you found that one perfect spot in the level to use it. My biggest criticism with the level design comes in that during many levels in the campaign, that some of the background elements look like platforms or parts of the environment you can hop on, which isn’t the case, causing you to fall when you assumed it was somewhere you could go. The new ducking mechanic allows Bub, Bob, and his two new friends to crawl under low gaps, with some levels having enemies blocking the shortcut until you deal with them.
Bubble Bobble 4 Friends: The Baron is Back! is certainly enjoyable, there’s no doubt about that, but frankly, I had way more fun when it was a group of us screaming and yelling at each other to race to our downed bubble form, or trying to guide our last remaining dragon friend to the last enemy on the screen, via a path of spikes or other hazards. From a single-player aspect, there is only enough here to aid the game along, as the story mode and presentation can only carry the game so far. The game is bright, colorful, and maintains that classic feel, especially some of the levels in the tower, but is also an experience that does feel very different than its arcade roots.
Developer - Taito Publisher - ININ Games, United Games GmbH Released - November 17th, 2020. Available On - Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5. Rated - (E) Mild Cartoon Violence. Platform Reviewed - PS4. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.