Bubble Bobble

Bubble Bobble is a 1986 platform video game developed and published by Taito for arcades, in which players guide the twin Bubble Dragons Bub and Bob through one hundred stages of the Cave of Monsters to rescue their kidnapped girlfriends.¹⁵¹⁶ It was distributed in the United States by Romstar and in Europe by Electrocoin.¹³ Designed by Fukio “MTJ” Mitsuji?, the game became widely popular and spawned a long series of sequels and spin-offs.¹⁵

The premise casts the players as Bub and Bob — internally named Bubblun and Bobblun — two boys transformed into dragons after Baron Von Blubba kidnaps their girlfriends.¹⁵¹⁴ Each of the game’s 100 levels is a single screen without scrolling; a player moves along platforms and jumps to those above or beside them, as in most platform games.¹⁵ Players progress to the next stage once every enemy on the current one is defeated, and the levels become progressively more difficult.¹⁵¹³

The central mechanic is the bubble: Bub and Bob blow bubbles that can trap enemies, who are then defeated when the player bursts the bubble with a spiny back.¹⁵ Trapped enemies turn into food items when the bubble pops, and bursting several at once yields items on an increasing point scale — 1,000 points for the first, then 2,000, 4,000, and so on — which accumulate toward extra lives.¹⁵ Foods projected around the level include hamburgers, hot dogs, sushi, bananas, and ice cream.¹⁷¹⁸ Bubbles float for a time before bursting and can be jumped on to reach otherwise inaccessible areas.¹⁵ Enemies turn “angry,” becoming pink and moving faster, if they are the last remaining, if they escape a bubble left too long, or if too much time is spent on a level.¹⁵ A skull is the game’s only negative item; if either player collects one, a comet crosses the screen, and any monster it strikes turns angry, though this outcome is rare.¹⁵

Bubble Bobble Arcade GameplayFamily Friendly Gaming

The game is an early example of a title with multiple endings, which depend on the player’s performance and discovery of secrets.¹⁵ A range of power-ups and items alter play: yellow, pink, and blue candies increase the speed, range, and flying speed of bubbles respectively, while red shoes increase movement speed.¹⁷¹⁸ Special bubbles produce water, fire, and lightning effects — the water bubble flows down to defeat enemies, the fire bubble drops flame, and the lightning bubble is blown horizontally.¹⁷¹⁸ Other items include holy water that removes all enemies on the screen, parasols that warp the player across a variable number of stages depending on color, magical staffs that turn remaining bubbles into food, sky-blue rings that award points for movement, a Chack’n Heart that makes the player invincible, magical necklaces that bounce a shining ball around the stage, and clocks that freeze monsters for a set time.¹⁷¹⁸ Collecting the alphabet bubbles spelling “EXTEND” grants an extra life.¹⁷ After the normal game is cleared, a harder “Super” game becomes available.¹⁸

The arcade cabinet used a two-way joystick and two buttons — fire and jump — and supported two simultaneous players in cooperative play.¹⁶ It was a horizontally oriented, standard-resolution raster machine released in an upright cabinet weighing about 350 pounds.¹⁶ Two documented cheat codes exist: a “POWER UP” input on the title screen grants constant speed-up and rapid-fire bubbles and opens secret rooms on levels 20, 30, 40, and 50, while an “ORIGINAL GAME” code restores the default settings.¹⁶

The original arcade board was produced by Taito, which had released 490 machines in the Arcade Museum’s database under the name since 1967 and whose contemporaneous releases included Arkanoid?, The Fairyland Story, The Legend of Kage, and Mat Mania.¹⁶ The character Bubblun has been suggested by fans to resemble Tamagon from Nintendo’s Devil World?, an early Famicom game, though this is not an established connection.²¹

Ports and re-releases

Bubble Bobble was ported widely across home computers and consoles.¹⁵ Taito Software published a version for the Nintendo Entertainment System in November 1988 in North America, credited on the NES with design by Mitsuji and David J. Broadhurst and music by Tadashi Kimijima and David Whittaker.¹¹⁵ In the NES version, Baron Von Blubba kidnaps the brothers’ girlfriends Bubby and Bobby and turns the brothers into the Bubble Dragons.¹⁵ A Game Boy version followed in March 1991.² A Sega Mark III / Master System conversion titled Final Bubble Bobble was released in Japan on July 31, 1988, on a gold cartridge holding two megabits.¹⁰ The game was also converted for home computers and platforms including the Sega Master System, Game Boy, and DOS.¹⁵

The direct sequel Bubble Bobble: Part 2 appeared on the NES in August 1993 and the Game Boy in July 1993.¹² Later entries in the series included Classic Bubble Bobble for the Game Boy Color? in 1999 — despite its name, not a port of the arcade game but a reworked version stripping Bub of his charge bubbles, hover ability, and health points and eliminating the tougher bubble-resistant enemies, while adding branching stage tracks reached through doors ²⁰ — Bubble Bobble: Old & New for the Game Boy Advance in 2002, and Bubble Bobble Revolution for the Nintendo DS in 2005.¹⁹ The game’s bubble-trapping concept also fed into the later puzzle series Bust-A-Move.¹⁶

The arcade original has been reissued through Taito’s Arcade Archives line on Nintendo Switch, using the Japanese ROM with options-menu and manual translations into Japanese, English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish, and offering adjustable difficulty, faithful reproduction of period arcade display settings, and online high-score competition.¹⁴ The Switch release is a single-system title for one or two players and occupies 68 MB.¹⁴ An officially licensed mobile version, BUBBLE BOBBLE classic, was published by MOBIRIX for iOS and Android under a Taito license in 2020; it adds an automatic-fire function and achievement and leaderboard support, and remained in active update as of 2026.¹⁷¹⁸