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Bubbles
This is an interactive documentary about the life of a Scrubbing Bubble. As
a small bubble, your job is to scoot around the sink, soaking up smaller
bubbles, bits of dirt, and any ants that wander into your path. As you accrete
more common kitchen debris, your bubble grows bigger and begins to form a face.
When your bubble is big enough to sport a big ant-eating grin, you can start to
do real damage. Razor blades are always deadly; roving brushes are deadly until
your bubble has a mouth, and roaches are deadly unless you can dispatch them
with a broom that periodically appears. When the drain at the center of the
sink flashes green, you can slide down the drain and advance a level - something
which you can only otherwise accomplish by clearing the sink of
"edible" items.
(Williams Electronics, 1983)
Okay, and the designers at Williams were smoking what, exactly, when
they dreamed this one up?
But I kid Bubbles. It's actually a pretty cool game, and a rare
example of a cutesy game from Williams, a company which usually turned out such
macho, kill-'em-all shooters as Defender,
Sinistar and Robotron. Williams' only other entry
in the cute game genre was Make Trax.
Some of the Bubbles coin-op cabinets were round, molded out of a
plastic material which didn't survive the rigors of arcade abuse very long; a
few copies of Blaster were also
manufactured in this form. The plastic cabinets haven't stood the test of time
well.
Perhaps it's because I've had a couple of apartments where this kitchen sink
drama was played out before my eyes - sans razor blades and sentient
smiling bubbles scooting around on missions of mass destruction - but I've never
been able to get into Bubbles, not even in retrospect. I can honestly
play it and judge that it has mechanics that would merit repeat play...but I'm
not a fan of creepy crawly things, so it's never really been one of my personal
favorites.
But it is a good game. The graphics are surprisingly good, coming from much
the same processing engine that powered Robotron and Sinistar.
Bubbles was initially ignored by cartridge and software manufacturers
in the 80s, but its existence as part of Williams' rarified stable of games made
this once-hard-to-remember game a fixture on the console emulator circuit. A
very good version of Bubbles is featured on Arcade's
Greatest Hits: The Williams Collection, which itself has now been
translated from its original Playstation version to new editions for the N64 and
Sega Dreamcast. Now, if only the Playstation version of the collection in
question allowed the use of the analog joystick controllers...Bubbles
would be almost perfect.
Rating: 
Four quarters - a couple of minor irritants, but mostly a compelling and
addictive game.
Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com editor/webmaster
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