game audio

.aa - week one.

Bubble Bobble was released in 1986, before I was born, but was popular enough to make it onto plenty of subsequent game systems. Beginning as an arcade game, its now avaliable for PS2 and xbox 360.

It incorporates two-player cooperative really well (second player can join whenever). It was one of the first games to have multiple endings; finishing the 100 levels in single player mode will only warp the player back to a previous level. Finishing the game with two-players will successfully rescue bub and bobs' girlfriends. Giggity. However, this is not the "true" ending, for that, one must enter the code obtained from rescuing the girlfriends and enter that on the starting screen to unlock 'super' bubble bobble. In this mode the enemies are randomised, making it very difficult for the two-players to complete the game (again) and clock the true ending! Some of the baddies...

Stoner


Baron von Blubba


In the game there is this repetitive song that loops over and over, until the single melody of the song is so ingrained in your head all you can think about is shooting bubbles out of little dragons mouths and bopping along to that silly tune. Apart from that the only sound effects are the sound of the dragons jump and the sound of a bubble popping. Aesthetically, the music blends in nicely with the sound effects and the feel of the whole game generally - bubbly and silly.

There is a remake of the game available for OSX here

.sources.

Haines, Christian 24.07.07, "Introduction to Game Audio," EMU, Adelaide University.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_bobble
accessed 27.07.07