I don't know about you, but when I was younger, around 5-7 years old, I had my PS1 and played a game called Bust-A-Move 2: Arcade Edition to death, well for some reason I no longer have that but I still have Bust-A-Move 4 which I still play sometimes. Anyways, I had never played the original game back then since I had never had a SNES, so I felt like seeing how the first Bust-A-Move turns out.

Story: I may be completely missing something, but as far as  I know, there is no story. Most of the games in the series have never had one, and even if they did, they... didn't really matter that much. You could just say the story is, Dreg/Drunk, is doing evil things and you have to stop him by popping bubbles for some reason, OH, and there's treasure...

Gameplay: I'm sure most people may have played this sort of puzzle game either by different name or one in the Bust-A-Move series, but I might as well explain this for the people who haven't. The basic premise is that there is an arrangement of bubbles on the top of the screen, you are able to shoot your own bubbles at these bubbles, though the colour you get is random. Your job is to pop all these bubbles by shooting at them with your own and making 3 of the same colour touch together, when this happens, the line of bubbles will pop and any bubbles that are being attached to these bubbles you pop alone will drop which also gets rid of them as well as giving bonus points, if you are playing puzzle, then once you have popped all the bubbles, you clear the round and move onto the next one. You have to be somewhat quick though, as you only have a few seconds to shoot before the bubble is shot automatically, there is also the problem with after a few bubbles have been shot, all the bubbles will be pushed down a bit. There is also a line above your shooter, if the bubbles drop low enough and cross this line, you fail the round and lose a credit, you can then choose to continue or quit. Puzzle mode has 100 rounds for you to complete, if you lose all of your credits, you lose and are given a password to continue from that point, but you do not get your credits back. The other mode that is available to you is the versus mode against the computer (or against another person) where you battle against several different enemies from the Bubble Bobble games, you do not win by popping all the bubbles on screen but rather by making your bubbles drop instead of popping them to send bubbles to your opponent, the more bubbles you drop, the more bubbles are sent to your opponent and the harder it will be for him. Whoever has their bubbles cross the line at the bottom loses and the other wins, and as you would expect, the enemies you encounter get harder and harder. The last mode you have is challenge record where and endless amount of bubbles are spawned in which the aim is to pop as many bubbles as you can before the bubbles cross the line. The gameplay in general is pretty darn fun and easy to get the hang of, but I would be lying if I said that the 100 rounds don't get tiring, not just because it's basically the same sort of thing every round, but there is another reason which we will get to soon.

Controls: The controls are incredibly simple, you use the d-pad to aim your bubble shooter left and right, and you press b to shoot, I haven't actually tested if the other buttons shoot, but I wouldn't be surprised. The controls are perfect although I don't know how you could screw up the controls for a game that only uses 3 buttons.

Graphics: Well, if you have seen my reviews already, you know that graphics are not something that I generally care too much about as long as they are good for the time, and I believe that Bust-A-Move looks pretty good, nice and colourful as you would somewhat expect from a game like this and they are in general, well..... pretty good.

Sound: The music that is in the game is nice and I think it does fit the game, there are tracks for the puzzle mode, versus mode, and challenge mode. I won't go into it too much since there is not that much music here in general. But if there's any complaints I can make about this game, it is this... the music in puzzle mode, while I do somewhat like, is the ONLY track that plays through all 100 rounds. So if you feel like doing a complete playthrough in one sitting, you will be hearing this same track for the duration of the playthrough, as you could imagine, the track gets INCREDIBLY ANNOYING. Bubble bobble seemed to have this same problem as well with having only 1 track through all rounds of that. So I can only play through puzzle mode so long before getting annoyed with the music, it started to drive me mad, but that's just me.

Difficulty: I have not actually finished all of puzzle or versus yet, but I have played the majority of puzzle mode and while it is very simple to begin with, this game does get pretty difficult at some points with the structures that are made with the bubbles, I did actually get a game over while playing. But when you fail a round and continue, you get this little line guide that tells you how the bubble will travel when you shoot it, which is incredibly useful and can usually get you through the round, but once you have finished that round, the line is taken away until you fail a round again.

Verdict: The game in general is great and defiantly a good start to the series, although I do think that the sequels improve the formula with different types of bubbles, blocks and I remember Bust-A-Move 4 adding a pulley system as well as a combo system for the versus mode, and the rest of the games have different music tracks specific to the different backgrounds.

The good
Incredibly easy to understand, not to mention, fun.
The game can be pretty addictive
Controls are spot on
The game gets harder as you go through the puzzle and versus rounds, so it's not exactly a walk in the park.
All the modes in general are great
The computer can get pretty challenging

The bad
There is not that much variation in terms of the bubbles, they are mainly just different colours and that's it.
The music could get on your nerves after a couple of rounds, but some people are more tolerant of this.
100 rounds of what is basically the same thing can get pretty boring.

Well now that's done, I might move on to reviewing Bust-A-Move, the arcade version, and maybe the rest of 'em.

This is a very good review. I have played this game before, but I never really got into wanting to beat the whole thing. I didn't realize that there were 100 levels. What I really liked about yours is that you made a "good" and "bad" summary at the end which is fairly unique in terms of the format of reviews compared to other people. Personally, I think you could have expanded more on one or two of your points, but overall, this is a well thought out and detailed review. Looking forward to seeing more from you.