It’s kind of hard to describe puzzle bobble, on one hand it looks very retro and it’s low resolution graphics kind of remind you of the classic arcade game packs that you could play on a super Nintendo or Sega genesis, but on the other hand it looks very futuristic and has a cool looking color scheme and style. The sound effects are flat out awesome and the electronic music really gets me going, you can probably attribute all this to that according to wikipedia Puzzle Bobble was actually an arcade game developed in the 1990′s and later ported over to flash for the world to enjoy on their computers.
Unlike other bubble shooters which allow you to use your mouse to aim and fire the bubbles from your canon, Puzzle Bobble forces you to use just the arrow keys and the space bar in order to play the game and they don’t provide much in terms of actually being able to aim the bubbles to the correct spot.This obviously makes the game much more difficult especially with USB keyboards because they don’t have the same precision as your standard mouse when it comes to aiming. The upside to this type of game play is that you can enjoy Puzzle Bobble with just a single hand so if you plan on making a long phone call to a customer service department then it’s probably a good way to kill some time while you wait. After all, the game’s funky electronic music will probably be 10 times better than the standard jazz music most on-hold phone systems play.
The game has multiple levels and in true classic bubble shooter form, you have to pop all of the retro colored bubbles before they collapse into your canon. Of course as you complete each level the next one becomes harder and harder until either you beat the game or the game beats you. I’m still not sure how many total levels there are since the game forces you to aim with a keyboard instead of a mouse, i’m not very good at it. But if you do find out how many levels there are let us know and we’ll post it here on our blog for everyone else to see. Overall I’d give the game 4 stars, I really love the look and sound of the entire game but I just can’t get over the fact that you have to use your keyboard in order to aim. For a bubble shooting game that just doesn’t feel right nor natural and while I understand it was programmed back in the day before computers were available to the masses it would have been great if whoever ported it over to flash included the ability to use the mouse. But don’t let my petty rant stop you from enjoying the game, despite that 1 negative (for me at least) it’s still a great bubble shooter game that I think you’ll enjoy.