Collection essentials #299: Bust-A-Move 2: Arcade Edition (Saturn)

Prolific arcade developer Taito (makers of the famous Space Invaders) had released a popular arcade platformer in the mid ‘80s called Bubble Bobble, a game that featured little cutesy reptiles named Bub and Bob. The game received many home ports, most notable to the NES, and was a worldwide success. When there’s a successful platformer with a marketable mascot, you can bet that spinoff games in other genres will be coming. And so, Bub and Bob were featured in a popular arcade puzzle series starting in the mid ‘90s, the second entry of which is today’s featured game.

First I want to comment on the strange marketing of this game. The series had a great name, being deemed “Puzzle Bobble”, which sounded good and made it clear what popular series this was a spinoff of. But for some strange reason, they decided to change the name for its international release, to “Bust-A-Move”. This confusing title would think the game has something to do with dancing, but it doesn’t at all. And there’s the issue of the bizarre front cover that the game received for its home port. In the mid ‘90s some companies tried to go the bizarre route with their TV and magazine ads. The image you see for the box art originated in one of those ads, and for some reason they decided to just go with it for the front cover, which was a frankly horrible choice. The humans depicted appear nowhere in the game, and the imagery seems downright disturbing. This is a kid-friendly game with cartoony graphics, and this bad cover does not represent it well at all!

Anyways, Bust-A-Move 2 is a great game with a simple but effective premise. Your character is given a series of colored balls one at a time, and you must shoot them into the sea of balls at the top of the screen. You must aim well, because the goal is to group balls of the same color. When three of the same color are touching, they will be eliminated, and any balls hanging exclusively from those three will also fall off. If the stack reaches the bottom of the screen, it’s game over! It’s easy to pick up and play but can be tricky to master, perfect for a great arcade-style experience.

There are different modes in this game, such as the puzzle mode where you have to clear a pre-arranged series of balls in a limited number of moves. But as you might guess, the real bread and butter of this game is multiplayer. Playing against a friend is great fun! Since the game is easy to understand, it’s easy for new players to jump in and have a good time.

This is a multiplatform game that got released for various current platforms in its day, but the Sega Saturn version is pretty clearly the best one. This is because it has the most content, including the updated arcade version “Puzzle Bobble 2X”, and an exclusive “Edit” mode where players can create and save their own levels.

Bust-A-Move was a commonly-cloned game back in the day, and there’s a good chance that you’ve encountered some kind of ripoff of this game somewhere, whether it be on a computer, on your phone, or whatever. This is the granddaddy right here, give Taito the credit for the concept!

I got to try out Bust-A-Move here and there as a kid and always liked it. I believe this Saturn release was the first time I actually owned one of the games for myself, and I got it fairly early on in my days of owning the console, the very copy you see in the photo. I suppose the one thing this entry lacks is the ability to play with more than two players. So it’s not necessarily the best Bust-A-Move/Puzzle Bobble game in a vacuum, but it’s still a really solid entry that you can’t go wrong with. I really should pull it out more often when I have friends over, I haven’t done so in quite a while. A great multiplayer essential.