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Puzzle Bobble V2, by Outlook Entertainment, $19.99
Reviewed November, 2003 by Korey Marciniak

Bubble Bobble, the first of the games in this series, was released way back in 1988 for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Taito then took the main characters Bub and Bob out of their series and created a puzzle game in 1994 known as “Puzzle Bobble.” From then on there have been a multitude of spin-offs and sequels to as many game platforms as one can imagine. The series is actually better known by the name “Bust-a-Move,” and it’s a sure bet that anyone who has owned a Gameboy Advance, Playstation, or Super Nintendo has played this game.

The gameplay for Outlook Entertainment’s Puzzle Bobble is a direct port of all the other games in the Puzzle Bobble series. For those of you who haven’t played it, the gameplay is very easy to get into. All the rounds take place in a rectangular arena; as the player you have to match the colors of the balls up top with the ones you fire with the help of Bub and Bob down below. The balls are held on by each other, and removing any higher up will let those hanging on drop down as well. The faster you play, and the more balls you clear at once, the higher the score. To make life difficult, the ceiling of the arena and all the balls in it drop down on the player. This forces the player to move quickly as they must remove the balls from the field of play before it reaches the line at the bottom. The gameplay is exactly what we’ve come to expect from the Puzzle Bobble series, and it’s ported flawlessly.

Control in Puzzle Bobble is easy and really shows the attention to detail. The player can use the stylus, the Jog Dial, and the hard buttons to play the game. You can set the hard buttons to do little and big rotations of the launcher at the bottom, and playing with a stylus couldn’t get any easier. I did suffer a few glitches when playing the game; once in a while if I tapped with the stylus I would no longer be able to use the hard buttons. This is a minor bug, since one trip to the options menu fixes it; however, it does detract slightly from an otherwise perfect implementation.

Puzzle Bobble’s graphics are quite possibly one of the best I have seen yet on Palm OS. The graphics are colorful and clean; Bub and Bob are animated smoothly , and everything looks amazing. Now this is a port of a gamed already well established, but Outlook Entertainment added their own creative touches. They take into account hi res screens, and rendered the graphics very well on the smaller PDA screens. The version 2 of the Puzzle Bobble game is a hi res only game, so you 160x160 users out there will have to play the original Puzzle Bobble, but from the screenshots it looks very much the same as this version.

The sounds in Outlook Entertainment’s Puzzle Bobble are standard Puzzle Bobble goodness. You get the opening and game over voices, and in-game music. The music is both a blessing and a curse. I liked playing the game with the familiar Puzzle Bobble music, and it really enhanced the gameplay; however, after about an hour of playing one might start to tire of hearing only one track. You do have options to turn on or off the music.

To sum everything up, Outlook Entertainment’s Puzzle Bobble is amazing. It’s a near perfect port of a game that has been around for a while, but has only gotten better with age. There is already an expansion pack available to let you play more of the classic Puzzle Bobble puzzles, so there is lot of replay value in there. I would have liked to see more than one music track, and the controls sometimes glitchy, but overall it’s a solid port of an awesome game.

Playing Hint and Tips

First off, turn on the aimer. You’ll quickly see how you can bounce the balls off the sides of the arena. Some levels can be beaten in one decisive move, but many will require thinking on your feet. Playing versus mode against the computer is not something you should pick first off, and that’s why practice mode and single player was included.