Bust-A-Move (SNES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
269A playthrough of Taito's 1995 puzzle game for the SNES, Bust-A-Move.
Played through all 100 stages of the 1P game on the normal difficulty level.
Not to be confused with Enix's dance game of the same name (or Terry Bogard's murdering of the phrase "Buster Wolf"), Taito's Bust-A-Move for the Super Nintendo is a conversion of the 1994 arcade game Puzzle Bobble, a spin-off of the Bubble Bobble series.
Like most good puzzlers, the gameplay is as addictive as it is simple. The object is to clear the screen, and bubbles are knocked out of the playing field by matching three of the same color. You launch bubbles out of a canon at the bottom of the screen, and since a bubble will stick to the first thing it comes into contact with besides the walls, the crux of the gameplay lies on how well you can judge the angle of the trajectory. The real trick is to clear out the top as quickly as you can, as any bubbles that aren't in someway anchored to the ceiling will automatically fall.
It doesn't take long to get used to the controls, especially thanks to fine adjustments being mapped to the shoulder buttons, and the single player game's difficulty curve is well tuned. The first several stages gently introduce the mechanics, while the endgame requires complete mastery of everything you've learned in order to stand a chance.
Even though the arcade version ran on much more powerful hardware than the SNES (Taito's B System hardware, and later on SNK's Neo Geo platform), Bust-A-Move is a close facsimile. The only real changes to the graphics seem to be due to the SNES's lower screen resolution and the tiny four megabit cartridge it shipped on. I have little doubt that, with a larger cartridge, it would've been virtually indistinguishable from its arcade counterpart, but that's a small quibble given how successful it is in bringing home an authentic arcade experience. The new levels are a great bonus, too.
The graphics are all cute, brightly colored, and full of typical Bubble Bobble personality. Bub and Bob strain to shift the canon back and forth, and all of the bubbles have little trapped bad guys floating in them. (But is it just me, or is the effect a bit creepy? They remind me of the eggs in the first Alien movie.) The soundtrack is just as catchy as always, and we even get the original game's full compliment of high-pitched voices.
Bust-A-Move rocks. In the end, that's really all there is to say.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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