Year: 1987
Developer: Software Creations
Publisher: Firebird
Genre: Arcade, Platformer
This is the story of Bub and Bob. They are brothers, you know, but have one problem. The evil Baron von Blubba has kidnapped their girlfriends. And if that’s not enough, he also turned the brothers into little dragons. Ok, so technically they’ve got two problems. Now, they could have tried to battle their way through 100 levels in order to rescue them, but they didn’t. No, they found new girlfriends and moved to Greenland, where they currently run a Fish & Chip shop.
Really? Did they really leave their girlfriends behind, while still being in dragon form? Of course not. But that would’ve been a cool story for a spin-off title.
The game itself is a conversion of an arcade released the previous year (1986) by Taito. The goal is, as mentioned above, to fight your way through 100 different screens (levels) and defeat that evil bastard von Blubba. Remember that he turned Bub and Bob into dragons? Thing is, in doing so he also gave them the ability to shoot bubbles (not to be confused with Michael Jackson’s chimpanzee).
And shooting bubbles they must, because it’s the only way to beat enemies. Once an enemy is captured in a bubble, jumping on him will defeat the foe, who will drop some food before he disappears, which can be collected for extra points, or bonus items, which will boost certain abilities for a short period of time.
While the game can be fun in single player, you get the most out of it by playing it in two player co-op mode. Graphics and sound are nothing special, but serve the purpose. But if you will excuse me for now, I’m gonna fire it up, to see how far I can get.
Here they come
‘Scuse me guys, any chance one of you has seen the Baron?
Woo, I made it to Level 10… out of 100. Gee, do I suck
Video (not by me, though):
The Retro Years 
I lost days to this game. Thanks for this reminder. I could feel myself playing along when watching the video!
Yay, the good ‘ol days. Well, wasn’t all good back then, but Bubble Bobble was one of those games where graphics and sound didn’t really matter. It was all about the gameplay.
And thanks for stopping by 🙂
And be thankful for that gameplay; had they opened up that Fish & Chips shop as Soosh suggested, our memories of the game would be drastically different. 🙂 All kidding aside, Bubble Bobble holds up surprisingly well even today. Classic.
What about ‘Bub and Bob Go to Greenland’. Nah, that sounds more like a film. And yeah, it’s a fun game. Perhaps not something I could play for hours, but still fun.