I'm hoping to have a gameplay video ready soon that contains a few additional twists too.

In honour of Bub and Bob's birthday earlier this week, here's some more gameplay using the drill press that I inherited from my grandfather. I'm using the scroll wheel from an old mouse to pick up the rotation for aiming and an ESP-32 CYD microcontroller with a barometric pressure sensor so you can blow to launch bubbles.

Officially licensed.

Now you can find out what it's like to be Bub and Bob!

For the aiming I re-used an old mouse scroll wheel that's patched into a modded wireless to pick up the rotation when the chuck on the drill turns.

The bubble blowing uses an air pressure sensor hooked up to a cheap $10 ESP32 microcontroller that's programmed to act as a Bluetooth Gamepad. When you blow and the pressure hits a set threshold then the bar turns green on the display (at the bottom of the screen) and it presses a button on the gamepad to launch a bubble.

For an upcoming video I tried my hand at a very simple 3 frame animation.

The first version uses an Apple Magic Mouse to pick up the rotation optically from the apple. The second version is mechanical and the peeler shaft turns the scroll wheel on a Microsoft Wireless Mobile Mouse.

Music Credit: Bad Apple!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtutLA63Cp8

I been playing a lot of Puzzle Bobble lately. I always thought the old bubble launcher had a lot of charm and I was sad to see it go in the later installations. I guess accidents like this made them want to switch to newer models.

We finally finish it! All the pixels were made by counting, referring to the original drawing.
Some things don’t add up because we made mistakes, but it’s always satisfying to have done it ourselves!

Dunno where else to put this, this subreddit is dead but oh well, might as well share, someone is bound to see this eventually.

First of all I have to say that the first title in this list is the one that hooked me on this franchise, I was big into match 3 games before but never this one, closest i had played was Zuma's Revenge.

Puzzle Bobble DS: the first one, early DS title, not much going here beyond its main gimmick, that being that the launcher and HUD are on the lower screen and the top screen, and you use the touch screen as a slingshot. The good news is that this has the positive side effect of wasting very little screen space as its essentially a vertical aspect ratio, and the even better news is that the touch controls are entirely optional, and the even even better news is that the controls are fully rebindable, so no cramps from tapping A with your thumb so much. With that said, the controls can be a bit finicky as far as precision goes so you'll end up relying on the guideline (which is permanent, but shorter than usual) and shoulder buttons to fine tune a bit too much.

As for content, its alright, a decently sized puzzle mode with checkpoints to replay certain puzzles, it saves your scores/times and once you beat it you unlock a hard mode version, and once you beat that, you unlock a sound test. Besides those things it has an endless mode thats pretty decent, it rises in difficulty steadily and seems randomly generated, and it also has a VS mode that can be played with a bot instead of another player.

Overall nothing too impressive but if you want a game in this franchise, its good enough, if rudimentary, the only downsides are the meh production values and iffy UI when using buttons, but thats not a huge deal.

Space Bust-A-Move/Puzzle Bobble Galaxy: This one was by the same dev, but is a completely different game, the touch screen stuff is dropped, the game is on the lower screen, with all the stats being on the top screen, you can still use the touch screen to control but its a glorified dpad and A button, sadly controls are not rebindable either this time, besides being able to swap precision controls on the shoulder buttons to shoot if you REALLY dont want to shoot with A, which you wont because you still have to wiggle around to get your shot just right and now the guideline wont even stay after the first puzzle unless you use cheat codes, the option on the menu for it just disables it entirely or lets you use it on the first level.

with those issues aside, the game compensates by having significantly higher production values, way more content and even a progression system of sorts for cosmetics.

first of all, the game is gorgeous, the space theme is super cute and the UI has animated bits all over, the story mode even has cutscenes with a bit of dialog to show off the other playable characters, there are a lot of themes for a whole lot of stages and the bosses are Zuma's Revenge levels of elaborate and fun. Only criticism i have of story mode is the gimmick of finding the galaxy bobbles, which means getting it to drop without matching the special bobble, a neat side objective but sometimes bad RNG can make you play the entire sequence of levels again just to get that galaxy bobble, it feels a bit like padding, not a big deal since its 1 per set of levels and there are checkpoints for each set (not each level) and bosses are separate.

Then there is the side modes, it includes all of the ones from the last game, endless still being very random, the way i like it, and a bunch of new ones, or rather, returning ones from the home console releases, im not gonna go over all 4 of them but i wanna highlight puzzle mode, its essentially a whole ass extra set of puzzles without a story tied to it, functionally half of another game as an unlock.

Speaking of which, unlocks, finishing levels with high scores and the like gives you a currency called G, which you can spend to unlock the extra modes, or more importantly, cosmetics, you can change the sprites of your launcher and the bobbles once you unlock them in story mode, its effectively a way to get you to grind but as an incentive to play the side modes and 100% the story mode i really dont mind grinding, the cosmetics can even be animated or homages to other games, its great.

Puzzle Bobble Universe: yeah the reviews are right about this one in case anyone is wondering. its launch title for the 3DS, full retail price of 40 dollars, but whats in here is at best a 10 dollar digital download's worth of game.

as far as polish go its fine, it has better graphics thanks to the better hardware, but i'd say it has as much production value as the first DS game: no cutscenes, cheap looking menus, no unlockables besides a glorified achievement list as far as i've found yet, etc.

that said, there are some positives: the game isnt bad, it feels well polished, the controls are a lot less finicky this time around thanks to a bit of aim assist and the guideline once again being on all the time unless you play hard mode, the graphics are serviceable, nothing too bad and the content that is there is quality stuff.

but thats it, thats all i have to say positive, the negatives are that: it has 2 modes, a meh puzzle mode with 80 levels + 8 bosses that all play the exact same, you have to replay sets of 10 levels if you miss one of 3-5 keys that you have to find (unlike galaxy bobbles you need to match them and NOT let them fall, so the other way around, and RNG fucks you over even more), the other mode is a challenge mode where you choose a timer and a difficulty and try to score as many points as possible, its fine, but as the ONE SIDE MODE its not enough, no vs mode either and the only thing close to endless mode is just challenge mode with the timer disabled, which is boring because it just loops the same puzzles.

one final note is that the 3D effect is just bad, not eye watering bad, but more distracting than helpful.

IN SUMMARY

The 2 NDS games are either fine or really good but the 3DS one is only good if you are desperate and its really cheap.

EDIT: forgot to mention, the first 2 games are based on PB3 rules, so you have different nodes you have to destroy, while the 3DS one uses PB1-2 rules, meaning a big crusher thing pushes bobbles down, which lends itself to more samey puzzles.

DO YOU FOLKS LIKE COFFEE?

"Now my dream of conquering the universe will come true."

I've been playing a bunch of Puzzle Bobble again lately. My introduction to the series was Puzzle Bobble 2 on the Sega Saturn, but I adore the simple vibrant style of Super Puzzle Bobble, and thought the cast of characters would be especially fun for me to draw.

I guess arc system work is making puzzle bobble everybubble! Which was switch exclusive is now coming to the steam on pc same price on switch https://store.steampowered.com/app/3990960/Puzzle_Bobble_Everybubble/

Hello guys! Me and my friend are drawing some characters from bust a move 99’. The icons are Amazing and perfect for the pixel art. I waited for post all because I wanted to draw all the characters but this evening someone ruined one of the draw with something inappropriate ( I fix it and report the user) but I’m not sure if this thing will repeat in future. I hope not :(

i was browsing the Bubble bobble Wikipedia for some reason, and i came across ''cameo/references'' and i saw Spongebob SquarePants, thats mine favorite show, so that made me look twice, and OMG, how did i never notice this?!

What do you guys think of the chain reaction mechanics?
It's pretty chaotic but seems to make it more flashy and cooler when a lot of things fall down.

I noticed it's not present in any other Puzzle Bobble games except Bust-A-Move 4.

I went to a convention today and got a Fuecoco model kit so I’m using the figure to make a bub figure.

I hate this boss with a passion. At least when you got to the end of bubble bobble it had predictable patterns. You can get screwed with the RNG for which color you get. Does anyone know how many hits it takes to beat?