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Super Bust-a-Move 2 (PS2)

Super Bust-a-Move 2 (PS2)

Written by John Yan on 11/15/2002 for PS2  
More On: Super Bust-a-Move 2
When I attended Ohio State University, I spent many quarters on the Bust-A-Move arcade game. It’s a simple puzzle game yet highly addictive. There have been a few sequels to the original that’s been released in the past years but the game hasn’t changed much. For those with a Playstation 2 and are looking to burst some bubbles at home, Taito has released Super Bust-A-Move 2.

Like most good puzzle games the concept is simple. In Super Bust-A-Move 2, you try and match up to three bubbles of like color to make them disappear. Shooting a bubble up will make it adhere to other bubbles unless you make a color match of at least three. As long as one side of the bubble is attached to another, it stays up on the board. When you pop a bubble that’s holding a line underneath it, everyone drops and gives you mucho points. On some boards the line of bubbles move down after you shoot ten bubbles up, being replaced at the top by a random sequence of bubbles. Some of the bubbles you shoot will perform some sort of action such as changing the color of the ones it hits or destroying any adjacent ones regardless of color. The gameplay is very very basic yet very addicting. It’ll take you about ten minutes to learn and then you’re hooked.

The look of the game hasn’t changed much in the past few years. Being the puzzle game that it is, I can’t think of any improvements needed to the graphics as it does suite the game well. The characters almost have a cell shading quality to them. They dance around as the action happens on screen reacting to certain situations. As you rotate the bubble shooter, the character does a little dance. When you shoot down a good number of bubbles at once, some special effect such as fireworks go off on screen.

There’s a story mode where you take one character and traverse the story in between game sessions. As you progress through the different stages, you’ll be treated with more of the tale. The cut scenes are interesting for a few of the characters but nothing that really exciting.

Chain reaction makes another appearing in Bust-A-Move and the gameplay might appeal to you more than the regular mode. Dropping bubbles can fly back up and knock down bubbles of the same color. I’ve had games where I was on my last few shots when I was able to get a few chain reactions and eliminate more than half the screen clearing the way for me.
Chain reaction makes another appearing in Bust-A-Move and the gameplay might appeal to you more than the regular mode. Dropping bubbles can fly back up and knock down bubbles of the same color. I’ve had games where I was on my last few shots when I was able to get a few chain reactions and eliminate more than half the screen clearing the way for me.

My favorite part of this game is the two-player mode. With another person by your side, you can have a lot of fun battling it out. The basic gameplay is the same but you have the opportunity to screw your opponent by releasing more than three bubbles at a time. In doing so, the extra bubbles are pushed over to your opponents screen and then fill up his area randomly. Games and can flip flop back and forth quickly if both of the people are releasing a good number of balloons in a rapid succession. With chain reaction turn on, the games becomes even more hectic. Depending on the character you choose, the types of bubbles that get sent over to your opponents can be different. Some of the characters help the beginner players more when they drop multiple bubbles by providing harder types of bubbles to your opponents.

A new feature for Super Bust-A-Move 2 is the ability to create your own puzzle. In all honesty it’s long overdue for this series. You now have a chance to create some interesting strategic puzzles with the tools presented to you. It’s a nice feature presented to the user and Bust-A-Move fanatics will be happy to be able to play their own or other people’s creations.

For those looking for a way to create your own Bust-A-Move puzzles, Super Bust-A-Move 2 gives you an edit more. Up to 25 puzzles can be stored on a 8MB card. Create and share your creations with friends. A construction set is long overdue for this series and it was nice to see Taito include it.

Super Bust-A-Move is a fun and addictive puzzle game. Like I said earlier, not much has changed through the years so if you already have Bust-A-Move on another system or an older version, there’s really no reason to pick up this one. On the other hand, if you don’t have this game already and love puzzle games, it’s a good pickup and you can probably find it pretty cheap now. A quick search of Pricegrabber shows that you can get it for $20 so it’s a cheap pickup for a fun two-player game.
Not much has changed over the past versions but it’s still fun to play. Two-player mode is a blast and the game now features an edit mode for your own bubble creations.

Rating: 7 Average

* The product in this article was sent to us by the developer/company.


About Author

I've been reviewing products since 1997 and started out at Gaming Nexus. As one of the original writers, I was tapped to do action games and hardware. Nowadays, I work with a great group of folks on here to bring to you news and reviews on all things PC and consoles.

As for what I enjoy, I love action and survival games. I'm more of a PC gamer now than I used to be, but still enjoy the occasional console fair. Lately, I've been really playing a ton of retro games after building an arcade cabinet for myself and the kids. There's some old games I love to revisit and the cabinet really does a great job at bringing back that nostalgic feeling of going to the arcade.

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