Downloadable Content notice: This game offers add-on content. Specifically, two sets of fifty expert stages apiece, each costing 200 points ($2). I have no direct experience with them at time of this review, so only the base game you get for 600 points (or 800 in Europe) is covered here.

Bubble Bobble is one of those classics that I missed out on as a child, only able to briefly play it on an NES and I had to go to some effort to find a copy to play and compare with this remake. The idea behind Bubble Bobble is pretty basic, like most games of its time; you control a cute dinosaur who can jump from platform to platform, and must snare his enemies in bubbles, then pop them to finish them off. You earn extra points, and thus extra lives, for defeating multiple enemies at the same time... though the game’s continue system is quite generous.

While most of your play time will follow the routine of jumping around followed by bubbling and defeating enemies, you’ll get a lot of variety in how you go about it. The main game offers four modes of play: Standard, Arrange, and ’Super’ variants of both. Standard mode contains the hundred levels of the original Bubble Bobble, while Arrange contains new stages with new gameplay elements like sloped platforms which let you shoot bubbles diagonally. Super mode for each of these just gets rid of the easier enemies, replacing them all with faster, harder ones from later stages.