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North America

Super Bubble Pop

by Steven Rodriguez - February 4, 2003, 10:59 pm EST

4

What happens when you take all the good parts from all the good puzzle games, mix them up, and make it into your own creation? You don't want to know.

Super Bubble Pop is a puzzle game that seems to be a strange conglomeration of several other puzzle games thrown together, in what ends up being a pretty poor attempt at an original puzzle title. Even if some parts of the gameplay mechanism do have some bright spots in them, the rest of the game turns out to be such a mess that you just can't get into this game as much as more traditional puzzlers.

The concept of the game is sort of like a Dr. Mario and Bust-A-Move cross-over on a 3D playfield. A few colored balls will appear at the far end of the grid, and your character (called a DJ) must shoot balls down toward them. A ball will continue on until it either hits the back wall of the playfield or hits another ball, in which case it will slide underneath it. Balls above will slide up one slot. To clear balls, the player must get at least three in a row vertically or horizontally (side to side or front to back), which will cause balls stacked on top to fall down, opening up chain reaction possibilities. If you don't manage to clear a stage quickly (more on that in a moment), more balls will slide in from the back, pushing everything forward. When the balls are pushed all the way up to the front, the game is over.

Along with the balls, there are also other objects to deal with. You can earn power-up stars by clearing all the balls that are under them. With these stars, you accumulate special moves, like the weaker abilities to flip over a column of balls or freeze a row of balls, or the more powerful moves like a bowling ball or a laser attack, akin to Tetrisphere's magic system. The character you choose also has a special attack power that will clear off a good chunk of the field, which must be powered up by popping the balls of that particular character's favorite color. As well as the "magic" system, stone blocks will get in your way as well. One kind stops the advance of the balls coming forward in one particular row, and the other slides along with it. Both can be destroyed with enough balls shot at them.

Clearing a level can be done in two ways. The easy way is to simply pop away all balls from the playfield. The harder way, which becomes the only way in the later levels, is to collect a certain item called a level token. These are earned the same way you'd get a power-up, by popping the balls underneath it. Depending on the level, you might need to collect as few as three or as many as five of these tokens to move on.

There are some pretty big flaws. The biggest problem comes with how more balls come into the playfield. If you're trying to get a horizontal pop along the back wall, and you shoot a ball to it, there's nothing more annoying than having a new stack of balls come up behind it as it's en route. Instead of it stopping where you want it to stop, it'll just slide underneath the next one back, totally screwing you up. What's worse than that, the only way to pop any bubbles that are floating around in the middle is vertically, which is a problem with a column of balls has reached it's maximum height of six, and there's no possible way for you to pop the color of the ball on the bottom since you can no longer get under it.

The magic system works pretty well, but also has some shortcomings. The meter that fills up for your character's special attack doesn't have an obvious top to it, so even if it looks full, it might not be, meaning you'll need to press X every single time you think you have it until you do. What's worse is that you can only use this attack when your meter is full, even though it only uses up half of it, which makes no sense at all. The individual special moves are all handy in certain situations, but obtaining them is a bit suspect; your character needs to physically collect them by standing in front of them as the power-up stars trickle down to you. If you miss them, you miss them. Having to wait to catch these stars slows down the pace of the game a bit, which isn't good when you have about 100 balls coming down toward you.

Still another gripe is the 3D playfield. It's almost impossible to see the balls behind the balls that are in the front. Yes, there are balls blocking them in the first place, but this is made more annoying by the fact that any balls behind any other balls are made transparent. Apparently, they thought that the balls behind wouldn't do you any good if the balls in front still need to be popped, but when you're trying to figure out where everything is in a three-dimensional area, these things make it tough to plan ahead.

The rest of the game doesn't really require so much attention, even though some other parts are just as bad. The game's graphics look like a bad dream from the '60s. Psychedelic and tripped-out are two phrases that can be used to describe what the game looks like while you're playing it. Outside of the game, the graphics and interface are simple, and it doesn't look as if much time was spent on polishing up the smaller stuff.

The game's control is simple, but there's a strange problem. When you move your character left and right across the screen, it pauses a bit at each row. Holding down left or right will move your character along at a normal pace, but tapping will scoot your character over much more quickly. In the later levels, you will be tapping more than holding, so needless to say, it gets on your nerves a bit.

The only really good thing that can be said about this game is that is has an excellent soundtrack. All of the music has an ambient, catchy beat, and there are enough songs that keep it from getting too repetitive on you. It's definitely in the top half of puzzle game soundtracks, and while it's not quite Neil D. Voss quality stuff, you'll want to just head for the Jukebox option in the game and give it a listen.

In the end, what Super Bubble Pop turns out to be is a failed attempt at a new type of puzzle game. There are so many things wrong with the gameplay mechanism that anything good is completely obliterated by its flaws. In the puzzle genre, when you're going up against the Tetris, Puyo Puyo, and Panel de Pon juggernauts, a game like this doesn't have a chance.

Score

Graphics Sound Control Gameplay Lastability Final
4 7.5 5 4 5 4
Graphics
4

It's not the actual playfield where the problems are, but its everywhere else. Backgrounds, foregrounds, menus and text just look bad. Colors clash and things move around too much, and even the simplest things like the high scores table do not look polished at all.

Sound
7.5

The box front tells you there's "wild music" in the game, and it's right. The soundtrack has some pretty catchy tunes with lots of ambience and good beat. They're not too repetitive either.

Control
5

Control is simple, but the problem is on the screen as you're controlling the game. Instead of a smooth left-right motion, which would make sense, you'll need to move over one square at a time. You'll be tapping left and right to scoot your character over faster, which isn't fun to do in a hurry.

Gameplay
4

The developer meant well, but all the flaws added up just cause the whole thing to fall apart. It's just that a lot of things aren't in your control. Even if you do manage to learn how things work perfectly, if new balls are added as you shoot one down, there's nothing you can do about it.

Lastability
5

There's a healthy amount of levels, but the game just isn't enjoyable enough for you to want to complete them all, let alone try to improve your high score. However, if you do get to some of the later levels, you'd better be good, because the game throws a lot at you.

Final
4

What's worse than a puzzle game clone? One that tries too hard not to be. It's like they took a bit from every game, stuck it in a blender, glued it all together, and then tried to package it as something original. Don't bother playing this game. There are far better puzzle titles out for the GameCube.

Summary

Pros
  • Excellent soundtrack
Cons
  • Anything else that isn't the music
  • Control quirks
  • Gameplay flaws everywhere
  • Graphics are not good.
Review Page 2: Conclusion

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Genre Puzzle
Developer Runecraft
Players1 - 2

Worldwide Releases

na: Super Bubble Pop
Release Dec 20, 2002
PublisherJaleco Entertainment
RatingEveryone

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