Bubbles burst. This is the last Sinclair ZX Spectrum game to reach UK #1, and the last on a format with Sinclair in its name in general. That computer has been a huge part of the journey so far, and now it will be no part at all. Sinclair got bought by Amstrad at the height of the Spectrum’s success, and Amstrad failed to make a successful successor with either name. From there, it was a long road to manufacturing TV set top boxes and forming the vague background to the UK’s version of The Apprentice, hidden outside of a carefully formed bubble of shiny glass.
Appropriately, it’s not a new game we say goodbye with, but a throwback to happier days. Taito released Bubble Bobble to arcades in 1986 and the Spectrum conversion arrived in 1987. It’s a budget re-release that sent it to the top of the charts four years later and, to highlight the delay, a year after its sequel achieved the same. The success of Rainbow Islands: the Story of Bubble Bobble 2 presumably played a part in the decision to make something of its predecessor again, and probably in the interest of players too. Many must have been playing this it the first time with the knowledge that dragons Bub and Bob would soon be real boys, producing rainbows instead of bubbles.
In some ways Bubble Bobble was already an old-school arcade game even for 1987. Its set of single screen levels, where exiting the bottom of the screen loops around to the top, recalls Pac-man (1980) and particularly the original, pre-Super, Mario Bros. (1983). In common with the latter, Bubble Bobble is a platform game without any exploration element, and has enemies whose defeat takes two stages of player action, and who recover if you are not quick enough. In Mario Bros., you have to flip enemies from a distance before rushing in to finish them off. In Bubble Bobble, it’s the reverse – you trap them in a bubble up close, then catch them before they float away too far. It sets up a smart risk and reward interplay that makes for an even more concentrated stream of interesting in-the-moment choices than Rainbow Islands, even if it doesn’t have the same range or heft.
Positioning, planning and reacting are the focus, with the occasional speed-rush interlude via power-ups which send water gushing down the screen, sweeping dragon and enemy alike along its path. Over the course of 100 levels there’s some invention in platform and enemy positioning, but Bubble Bobble remains a game which gives you one simple thing to do and tests it over and over again. On the Spectrum it’s even more cut back and functional, the relentlessly chirping music the closest it gets to the cuteness of Rainbow Islands. The game starts with the coin-op style display of a number of credits up on the screen and is a picture of a particular type of old arcade machine at its most unadorned. Roll up and test yourself on this one skill, one screen at a time, seeing how long you can keep consistent.
It’s a bite-sized, focused vision of what a game is which we’ve barely seen on Super Chart Island as popular computer games pushed at new limits of what they could be. In some ways, Bubble Bobble’s vision is one that feels more familiar than some of its immediate successors, such is the lasting cultural impact of simple-to-grasp arcade games. When films continue to have bleep-bloop sound effects to represent games, something like this is more than likely what is in mind. Its simplicity still appeals; it is well into the top half of most enjoyable games that I’ve played so far, and might stay there through the whole project. Even so, I’m glad that the greater ambitions of those creating games took us out of that bubble.
