MMMC - Bubbles

[scooterb23]

All right, got a new challenge for everybody. We've got the classic game Bubbles this time (I say time, because with summer break going strong, it may be a good idea to not force a new game every single week).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v643/scooterb23/mameclub.jpg

http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=7226

http://www.arcade-museum.com/images/11/118124206579.png

Bubbles is one of my favorite arcade games of all time. This is one I can either go zen, and completely rule forever, or chuck a quarter into every 3 minutes...but either way I have an amazing time playing this game.

remember folks, if you need the ROM... go to drop.io/dpmameclub to get it, and most of the more recent MMMC titles!

[Bloodreign]

I remember playing this one many years ago at a local laundromat, it seemed very different at the time to anything else I saw. It was unique in that it wasn't a maze game or a shmup, seemed kinda skill based in it's plastic looking blue cabinet. I've got this on one of the Midway compilations on PS 2 (perhaps MAT1), I might have to fire it up again though I've never been too successful with Bubbles.

[Rifter01]

This game is great, and definitely grows on you. Especially once you realize that you can push around the enemies a bit once the bubble gets to a certain size.

I vaguely recall this at our local mall arcade back in the 80's, yet, I didn't play it much because back then I didn't know that you can slam the sponges back into the drain.

[Ed Oscuro]

Well, barely made it to 53,790...needed maybe a dozen plays.

Especially once you realize that you can push around the enemies a bit once the bubble gets to a certain size.
That only works on certain enemies like brushes (maybe the sponges too). This is one of the few games I've seen (there are others but I can't think of any names) where input on the top panel is registered by the attract mode (push down to see an explanation of the game mechanics). Ironically the attract mode Bubble does far worse than a human player (the game is hard enough already).

The game is hard to "pick up and play" because each enemy type requires something specific to be done to beat it, and I found that I was trying to attack the wrong things even after watching the explanation loop. Cockroaches need not only the broom lady pickup, but you also must be a certain size before they take. Kicking brushes into the drain is pretty hard; I did it the first time by accident but never did it again. A more sensible and obvious arrangement of items that kill other things would make sense. Let's face it, when ants are climbing up your sink you put down ant traps, grab the Raid, or bunch them up. Who really hits cockroaches with a broom? (A really tiny and nonthreatening one at that.) And what's the sense of brushes and sponges being enemies, instead of pickup items? I understand that their relative size must've meant they wouldn't be normal pickup items, but it doesn't really work for me.

Add in inertia and I'm not finding this easy to play, especially when there's not really enough room to maneuver (especially on sinks with just two crumbs left but you're still a bit small, and sponges / cockroaches crowding all your space). I did like how Mr. Bubble has a raindrop shape when pushed fullspeed for a moment.

Annoyingly, the game asks the #1 player to put their initials in twice - even if the score tables are daily / all-time (which I don't think they are) this doesn't really make sense and means the next player / next game has to wait longer which is not what operators or players want, for the dubious payoff of the option of using different initials. This was present in the prototype version and I was expecting it to change.

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In other news, I broke 100K in Crackshot a while ago. Does anybody think that playing with a mouse is much easier than using the gun on the original Exidy cabinets? I can't compare but I'd assume it to be so. Also I got three bars in a row on one play :D

[Arcade Antics]

FWIW, all your criticism is based on not playing the actual arcade machine.

That only works on certain enemies like brushes (maybe the sponges too). This is one of the few games I've seen (there are others but I can't think of any names) where input on the top panel is registered by the attract mode (push down to see an explanation of the game mechanics). Ironically the attract mode Bubble does far worse than a human player (the game is hard enough already).
Once the bubble has a face, it can push any of the moving enemies, except the cockroach. Many Williams games and several Atari games use the CP to display instructions, high score table, etc.


The game is hard to "pick up and play" because each enemy type requires something specific to be done to beat it
Not really. The goal is to clean the sink, not to kill enemies. Bumping the sponges into the drain is a side effect of the play - in fact, it was not included in the early versions of the game.


and I found that I was trying to attack the wrong things even after watching the explanation loop. Cockroaches need not only the broom lady pickup, but you also must be a certain size before they take.
Can't pick up the broom unless the bubble has eyes. And to pick it up, you have to touch the actual broom, not the cleaning lady.


A more sensible and obvious arrangement of items that kill other things would make sense. Let's face it, when ants are climbing up your sink you put down ant traps, grab the Raid, or bunch them up. Who really hits cockroaches with a broom? (A really tiny and nonthreatening one at that.) And what's the sense of brushes and sponges being enemies, instead of pickup items? I understand that their relative size must've meant they wouldn't be normal pickup items, but it doesn't really work for me.
How many times have you fallen straight down on a buzzard rider while atop your ostrich? How often do you kick a pest and receive a coin? In Change Lanes, you get more points for driving on the water. Come on. :) A razor blade, a brush, or a sponge will pop a soap bubble, 'nuff said.


Add in inertia and I'm not finding this easy to play, especially when there's not really enough room to maneuver (especially on sinks with just two crumbs left but you're still a bit small, and sponges / cockroaches crowding all your space). I did like how Mr. Bubble has a raindrop shape when pushed fullspeed for a moment.
The arcade game usese the Williams 49 way joystick, same one as in Sinistar. If you're playing it without one, it's a very different experience.


Annoyingly, the game asks the #1 player to put their initials in twice - even if the score tables are daily / all-time (which I don't think they are) this doesn't really make sense and means the next player / next game has to wait longer which is not what operators or players want, for the dubious payoff of the option of using different initials. This was present in the prototype version and I was expecting it to change.
The arcade game allows the op to set the high score display from 3 to 24 (or so) characters, same with most Williams games. The highest score was allowed to put in their entire name so the initials aren't redundant. If you get top score, you put in "Ed Oscuro" and then "EO."

[Rifter01]

My score: 95010...And I made it to level 16. I know on a better day when I'm in the zone I could of broken the 100K mark (esp. since the game gives extra lives at every 25000) but, today isn't that day. :shameful:

[Ed Oscuro]

About a dozen more plays (including reboots) and I hit 102,100 (sink 17). Some generous extra life points helped bump me barely past the mark from previous plays around the 65K mark. (Bookkeeping reports 32 minutes total uptime in my highscore session, though that doesn't include every play.) Spent more time writing this darn post up...no surprise there.

I tried playing quote tag with Arcade Antic's intriguing and helpful reply to my points, and it didn't work for my purposes, so I'll just start with a few relevant chunks instead:

I can sympathize with trying to get somebody to understand a game they're slamming as being too complicated or that they aren't playing the right way. I don't usually see the logic of saying that not playing a game 100% "correctly" automatically makes all points invalid, though - only some.

About the 49-way joystick: I can play four-way or eight-way games as well using arrow keys (requires some fancy finger work) as some people do using the joystick, and I've played many four-way games using an analog stick as well. The difficulty of the setup varies from game to game - some games are fairly forgiving of such a setup, while others aren't. With this game I don't get the feeling it's a large problem. I know using the arrow keys (in this case) is a handicap, but I'm familiar coping with it and I'm not blaming the game for the quirks this introduces (which are often not all that different from needing to center a stick; it's mainly changing directions between adjacent directions that suffers, not 180-degree turns). I can very plainly see how the game likes to suck you down the drain, how speed ramps at varied rates, and how turning around some enemies can be difficult. It's rare (especially at higher levels) that I find situations where you need to get up to speed and change directions between adjacent directions, i.e. from north to north-north-east. Full stops and starts are pretty common in this game, and looking at my score it's not such a major problem.

The 49-way stick would be helpful but it will not overcome my primary problem with the inertia. Enemies range all over the place, so having more directions still won't solve the problem that an enemy is likely to jump into your path if you aim at the other side of the screen and hold that direction. I don't think that going in tiny increments (most of the time) is ultimately that different from playing with an arcade stick, in many cases, as the stick reportedly has an unusual centering mechanism. I would love to play the game in its original setup, or at the very least with an analog stick in MAME, which unfortunately doesn't support it.

About mechanics: Your points about how to get the broom going are helpful. After reading that about how the pickup works - or doesn't - and looking more at it in the game, it's obvious this is an obnoxiously finicky design, worse than I had originally said! Sometimes, with the broom visible, I get a pickup while still quite small (i.e. first level with eyes). Other times with the broom visible (i.e. being swept) and at a larger size I get nothing. With all the other things to worry about on-screen, it would be a great help if broom pickups did not feel semi-random. I'm even less of a fan of how there is inertia or lag in the broom's facing, so it's not been uncommon where my reflexes overshoot the game's reaction and I hit a cockroach with the broom 45 degrees from true. You'd be right to say that this is a way the game emphasizes flight over fighting.

I disagree that the goal is "cleaning the sinks," since the most direct way of doing that would on first glance be wiping out everything running around on it - like the enemies. The goal is simply scoring as many points as possible.

Another thing (which I didn't really appreciate until this last session) was that the game rewards you a lot more for building up the largest bubble and keeping the broom, than killing enemies. Again, this is something that the game is not especially clear about on first play, even having watched the introduction scheme. I won't say the game doesn't have depth - a lot of these early Williams / Midway games alternate levels, stages, or sinks where the goals change between more combat orientation and flight, and it's true here also due to the different sink designs - but a lot of it is only uncovered on play after play. I like finding secrets on multiple plays but a key rule for many successful arcade designs is that the core mechanics should be either self-explanatory or at least explained well.

I don't mind the contrast in payoff of Bubbles vs. games like Pac-Man (the power pellet overcomes all) or Juno First (where high scoring involves dodging and not shooting enemies until a power pellet-like thing shows up), but the payoff phase is all passive - watching the bubble get deflated in the intermission while you receive so many points per size reduction. Pac-Man and Juno First are beloved in part because after putting up with flight mechanics you can eventually get your revenge. Getting philosophical for a moment, Bubbles isn't even up to the level of the Perils of Pauline, whereas with Pac-Man people can imagine the ghosts as victims (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuQsaRYYheM), due to the ambiguous nature of their relationship.

I'm used to the style of game where anything that appears in the game ought to be useful for scoring, like Centipede, or any Japanese arcade shooter. Midway has a whole line of games that are more focused on "puzzling" out a solution to a given board / stage / sink, I know. I don't mind the frenetic pacing Bubbles attempts, but I prefer the way many other games do it. For example, I really enjoyed playing Exidy's prototype game "Teeter Torture" for the first time a few minutes ago - another game which has no real apparent scoring system other than blasting the things that grab the seesaw, and shooting the leap-ahead bubbles appearing in the air. In that game, like Bubbles, just staying alive is the focus. It's simpler, yes, possibly repetitive by some mindsets. I'm open to various ideas on what makes a successful game. Bubbles is more coherent than I originally gave it credit for, but ultimately the gameplay mechanism presents you with false choices (running after enemies, wasting your time and opening yourself up to attack; likewise hanging around the drain for multipliers is dangerous due to the short warning you get before cockroach invasion) and only one real way of playing (warping through the drain as soon as possible; clearing off all the crumbs also ends the stage but you don't get the bonuses).



The arcade game allows the op to set the high score display from 3 to 24 (or so) characters, same with most Williams games. The highest score was allowed to put in their entire name so the initials aren't redundant. If you get top score, you put in "Ed Oscuro" and then "EO."
A better design would be more like the Exidy game "Clay Pigeon," where you normally get just initials but on hitting #1 you get 32 letters to enter your name (and a short message). Best of both worlds. The name duplication between the top ranked players just wastes RAM or NVRAM space.


How many times have you fallen straight down on a buzzard rider while atop your ostrich? How often do you kick a pest and receive a coin? In Change Lanes, you get more points for driving on the water. Come on. :) A razor blade, a brush, or a sponge will pop a soap bubble, 'nuff said.
I also don't especially enjoy Joust. Like Bubbles, I wouldn't say it's a bad game, but I've got issues with it. (Again, inertia - it takes an aggravatingly long time to get up to speed while flapping). However, in terms of gameplay mechanics that one gets a pass because of its wildly original setting, and there's still nothing particularly upsetting about how the various gameplay items interact. It's completely understandable that a rider would hatch from an egg fully-formed, and the lance and (imaginably sharp) ostrich claws provide sensible explanations for why hitting a rider from above makes perfect sense. I don't want to tempt fate, but you can easily picture something this original as a scene in a movie.

If the second is Mario Bros., there's nothing particularly upsetting (except for turtle rights activists) about the concept of getting goodies from hiding enemies. (In case you have forgotten, the pelt trade (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fur_trade) was one of the original industries funding the competition for North America, which enriched the new countries of the United States and Canada at their start, and which funded great companies like what is now Hudson's.)

In the final instance, it makes sense that water driving in what looks like a semi-amphibious boatofcar would net more points, since it's more difficult to do. Thanks for pointing out another game which responds to user input without credits - if you hit the P1 button, the game gives a very tidy explanation of what's happening, including water driving (but stay off the grass!).

Compared to all the games you mentioned, Bubbles certainly is fuller of subtleties, but some of the mechanics are so subtle (finicky really) that they become hard to deal with.

Overall, I like Bubbles more now than I did before, but it's not winning any awards in the "pick up and play" category. I don't think arcade machines should be "dumbed down" and I don't mind nuance in mechanics, but this game doesn't strike a good balance between explaining mechanics or making the mechanics obvious (the fact that you have to wait nearly half a minute for the single screen of instructions to show, and then another at least two to three minutes to watch the explanatory videos, makes this not the quickest game to get into and play, something arcade operators used to require, even back in 1982 I suspect). The scale of creatures to each other doesn't especially make sense (I guess I missed the bedtime story where the Tooth Fairy moonlighted as a sink cleaning lady, and it's kind of awful that you just eat her up, too); and brushes and sponges clean sinks and make bubbles (if I were designing this game, I'd try to come up with some way that sponges or brushes could both be helpful and a hindrance, perhaps by emitting both helpful drops and also having enemies crawl out, or perhaps as competition to clean up enemies - I didn't see any sponges or brushes cleaning up crumbs or ants, at least).

To be fair: I was under the impression that bouncing into sponges and brushes took off a level of size, so I have been carefully avoiding them.

I also have no respect for the "oops! Bubble too small" scene when you have the misfortune of ending a level too small; totally arbitrary and designed just to munch quarters. Can't defend that one at all. It was especially funny when I bounced another brush into the sink to end the level, only to get killed as a reward.

To quote Dennis Miller, "But that's just my opinion and I could be wrong."

In other news! I suggest we check out Teeter Torture for the next MMMC!

[diskoboy]

Bubbles is one of my all time faves.

Every year, when our family would go to our condo in Panama City, Florida, the front office had a pool table and a few arcade games in the back room, for tennants of the condos. They had a Bubbles, and Missile Command machine, and an ancient Space Invaders pinball.

Whenever it rained, I'd be in there hogging the Bubbles machine. IMO, Bubbles was Williams last 'classic' game.

My highest score (this week) on factory settings - 109,570.