Puzzle Bobble 2X/Bust-a-Move 2 Arcade Edition & Puzzle Bobble 3/Bust-a-Move 3 S-Tribute

Genre: Compilation / Match-3 Puzzle

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local)

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Review:

This Compilation, which I will refer to as Puzzle Bobble 2X/3 because hoo boy is the actual title absurdly long, but anyway it contains those two games. Puzzle Bobble 2, sometimes known by the title Bust-A-Move 2, is a Match-3 Puzzle game released in 1995 in arcades, with 2X being an expanded version of the game originally released on PC and Saturn in 1996, containing both the original game and a collection of additional content. Puzzle Bobble 3, sometimes known by the title Bust-A-Move 3, is its direct successor, first released in arcades in 1996.

Both of these games use the same core formula that worked so well in the original Puzzle Bobble – multicolored bubbles are slowly lowered down from the top, and you need to remove them by shooting like-colored bubbles from a turret in the center at the bottom, trying to match 3 or more of the same color. However, in addition to trying to be smart about your placement, you’re also dealing with the challenge of making sure your aim is good enough that you get the bubbles you shoot where you want them to go, sometimes requiring you to ricochet your shots off walls.

Puzzle Bobble 2 takes the great Match-3 Puzzle gameplay of the first game and expands on it in multiple ways. There are new specialty bubble types that do various things to help and hinder you, wide stages that challenge you to tackle a larger area, different “routes” that give players a choice of stages to tackle through the campaign, and a Vs. Com mode, something I’m still surprised was missing in the first game (at least in its initial arcade release).

Puzzle Bobble 2X tacks onto that additional more challenging versions of the game’s levels, as well as an “Edit Mode” to give players the opportunity to create their own custom levels. Meanwhile, Puzzle Bobble 3 gives players additional Challenge and Collection levels on top of the standard Arcade campaign, and adds in a few new mechanics like “nodes” that bubbles attach to and rainbow bubbles that transform when nearby bubbles are matched.

Both games are still lacking features that are present in later games, as well as some of the many copycat games that have been released over the years – there’s no option to swap out the current bubble for the next one if your current bubble just won’t be useful at the moment, nor is there an option in the options menu to leave on the aiming guide for players who want less of a challenge or more of a focus on the puzzle side of things without the skill-based aiming that’s also a part of the gameplay.

Also, as a personal preference thing, I just don’t think the music in either game is quite as catchy as what was in the first game, though graphically everything here is definitely an improvement, with some really nice, detailed stage backgrounds compared to the more simple, abstract backgrounds from the original game.

This release of these games also lacks ACA NEOGEO Puzzle Bobble 2‘s “Hi-Score Mode”, “Caravan Mode”, and leaderboards. However, it does still include both English and Japanese versions, and gives players a decent array of options, including various display options, button mapping, and save states. There’s also a new “Slow mode” you can enable by pressing in the right analog stick.

For those who wonder how this version of Puzzle Bobble 2 compares to the ACA NEOGEO version, while both are at their core the same game, and this version lacks the aforementioned features, the added content that both 2X and Edit Mode provide for the game more than make up for these omissions. And while this Compilation is nearly twice as expensive, well, it also has Puzzle Bobble 3, which adds an even bigger amount of content.

In short, Puzzle Bobble 2X/3 is a pair of really excellent Match-3 Puzzle games, and I think this is the best version of Puzzle Bobble 2 on Nintendo Switch, and currently the only version of Puzzle Bobble 3. And while there are a lot of copycat games out there, including ones that have features this series hadn’t introduced yet, players craving classic games in the series that started it all should find this to be an ideal package to pick up.

tl;dr – This Compilation, which I’m just calling Puzzle Bobble 2X/3 for brevity’s sake, contains those two Puzzle games where players aim colored bubbles at other bubbles to match and clear them. This package has a good amount of content and decent features, and while it’s still lacking a few features we’ve come to expect from other games in this style, it is nevertheless an exceptional pair of Puzzle games well worth picking up.

Grade: B+

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