Back when I was a wee tyke, no more than seven, there weren’t a lot of cooperative game options available to gamers. To give some sort of perspective, my childhood was back in the days of NES, so while I did play the occasional game of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? on my father’s black and white work PC, most of my gaming was confined to the titles with the Nintendo seal of approval. Naturally, in addition to the limits set on video game play time by my parents, there was a premium on television time. With my sister only occasionally content with watching my pixelated meanderings and tiny, darting fingers that pinched vulnerable skin, it was often a lot easier to get my video game fix if I chose a game we could play together.
And the only game we had in our library that had truly cooperative gameplay was Bubble Bobble.
In contrast with the “taking turns” multiplayer of Super Mario Bros., Bubble Bobble gave my sister and me the opportunity to play together with a common goal. Of course, we were never really sure about the nature of that goal. Certainly, there were levels, so there was a clear progression. We knew our integers as well as the kids next door, so we knew that 39 was higher and, thus, better than 38. It’s just that there didn’t seem to be a lot of logic to the game itself.
The objective, near as we could understand it, was to maneuver our two colorful little dragons–Bub and Bob, apparently–around the static collection of platforms that composed a level and blow bubbles to capture various enemies. Those enemies were creatures of unidentifiable origins, borne of the contents of a toy shop channeled through the mind of Dali and given life. To our young eyes, they were delightfully colorful and somewhat sinister, particularly when we failed to pop a bubble in time, and the little monster became enraged and red and stalked our poor little dragons like demons from our nightmares.
If we failed to capture and pop all of those monsters after a certain amount of time, then the alarming words “Hurry up!” flashed across the screen and all of the little creatures became angry, and they were only soothed by one of our deaths–at least most of the time. As I said, the logic was never clear. Accompanying this sinister message was a change in the tempo of the usual, soothing Bubble Bobble theme (bum bum bum ba-dum bum bum ba-dum bum bum. . .) to a frantic, accelerated beat. It was a tune that wormed its way into the chest of the player, young or old, and inspired panic. It was almost impossible to cope with a level once it had reached this point of no return. And then the invincible “Skels” emerged, enemies that looked like the skeletons of our own little Bub and Bob. If my sister or I managed to salvage the situation, it always seemed miraculous. And then we were instantly conveyed to the next level with scarcely any time to enjoy our triumph.
We naturally assumed that as soon as we reached the final level and beat the final boss, no matter how many lives we lost, that we would have beaten the game. Except that it was never the “true” ending.
My sister and I played through Bubble Bobble about twenty times. I played through with each of my parents ten times a piece. We never received the “true” ending.
What makes Bubble Bobble truly great as an arcade game, or an arcade game on a home console, is its seeming simplicity combined with its almost absurd difficulty. In addition to the basics I mentioned above, a player needs to collect letters that appear in certain levels based on unknown conditions to receive the code for the “true” ending. And then there were the other tricks a player learned. The dragons could only jump so high, so if a player wanted to get up a stage with limited platforms, he had to us bubble jumping, essentially blowing bubbles and bouncing off them. Later in the game, the monsters get angry and break out of the bubbles so soon after being confined that the player has to master a “bubble kiss” in which he bubbles and then almost immediately hits the bubble to destroy the enemy.
There are few games from the NES that I will still pick up and play with my friends because, for the most part, I’ve mastered all of them. I know how to beat them. I know the shortcuts. I know the secret codes. I know all of the moves because they are well documented. Bubble Bobble is an arcade masterpiece because it is so complicated and difficult that it is worth returning to. I will never be a master of the game, and I will always fear the sound of that accelerated theme music, and I will always appreciate that look of nostalgia that overcomes my face when I start to hear someone hum the theme song.
If you haven’t played it, you should. Don’t bother with any of the ports to the most recent consoles. Find an arcade with the game or dig up your old NES, blow out that cartridge tray, and power on.