Our bubble dragon friends Bub and Bob from Bubble Bobble are back with help from Peb and Pab so that you can play a chaotic four-player mayhem version of the game!
The opening cut scene shows our hero Bub as a plush toy asleep in a child's bedroom. Bonner the green-garbed bad guy whacks him with his stick and ushers in various baddies to do battle. This appears to be based on some Toy Story-style jealousy about who is the child's favourite toy. Bub and Bob battle the baddies and eventually come face to face with Bonner in the final boss fight.
The basic gameplay is almost exactly the same as in the original Bubble Bobble: Trap monsters in bubbles and then pop them. When you pop a bubble containing a trapped monster, it will drop an item of fruit for you to pick up to earn points.
You can play with one, two, three, or four players. Playing with three or four feels particularly manic to me, but is good for speed runs and higher points scores if you can co-ordinate well between each other.
The original Bubble Bobble was a continuous series of 100 levels, but Bubble Bobble 4 Friends is split into five themed "worlds" of ten levels each, the last of which is a boss level. This is similar in some ways to Bubble Symphony with its worlds, although the way that you get to them is different.
Your points are totalled up per world rather than for all the levels in the game.
Many levels have significant wind currents that carry the bubbles around in certain patterns, unlike in Bubble Bobble where they mostly just floated upwards.
There are some subtle differences in controls. The main one is that if you land on a bubble then you will automatically bounce on the bubble without needing to press the jump button. While this is convenient, it can take some time to get used to it at first. If you want to pop the bubble by jumping on it, you need to press down when you land on it.
The game contains five "worlds" of ten levels each, based in locations around the room which form the theme of that world. The tenth level of each world is a boss level. Each world is self-contained, and once you finish a world, you will be given your score and then taken back to the world selection screen. Finishing a world will unlock the next world in the sequence until you have unlocked all five.
The worlds are:
When you finish a world, you will be awarded one, two, or three stars depending on how many points you earned in that world. These stars will persist in your profile. Completing an area with three stars will unlock that world's theme tune in the "memory album" so you can listen to it whenever you want to (does anyone do this?).
Completing all five worlds in easy mode will unlock hard mode. You can switch to hard mode on the world-selection screen, and you will need to complete each world again in hard mode to unlock the next one in the sequence. Hard mode has different monsters, and on most screens also more monsters. This means that although it is harder, you can score more points because there are more monsters.
The main way to get points is to bubble monsters and then pop them to get fruit. Picking up the fruit will give you points. The more monsters that you pop together in a group (referred to as a "chain"), the more valuable these fruits will be. If you pop seven or more in a chain, then you will earn diamonds instead of fruit!
| Chain length | Fruit | Fruit Points | Large dessert points | GIANT dessert points |
| 1 | Banana | 100 | 1,000 | 10,000 |
| 2 | Satsuma | 200 | 2,000 | 20,000 |
| 3 | Peach | 400 | 4,000 | 40,000 |
| 4 | Watermelon | 800 | 8,000 | 80,000 |
| 5 | Grapes | 1,600 | 16,000 | 160,000 |
| 6 | Pineapple | 3,200 | 32,000 | 320,000 |
| 7+ | Diamond | 6,400 | 64,000 | 640,000 |
At the end of a level, you will get more fruit to pick up. The faster you finish the level, the more fruit you will be given (up to 12 items) and also up to three large desserts made of the same type of fruit. These large deserts are worth ten times the normal fruit value, so it is definitely worth being quick enough to get all of them. The type of these fruits will depend on the largest bubble chain that you popped while playing the level.
The last level of each world has a boss fight, and defeating the boss will give you a GIANT dessert. The type of giant dessert depends on which world you are on. This giant dessert is worth ten times the large dessert, i.e. 100 times a normal fruit!
| World | Boss item | Points | |
| 1 | Bookshelf Forest | Peach | 40,000 |
| 2 | Bedside Bonanza | Watermelon | 80,000 |
| 3 | Toyland Terminal | Grapes | 160,000 |
| 4 | Cosmic Canopy | Pineapple | 320,000 |
| 5 | Bonner's Castle | Crown | 640,000 |
If you lose all your lives and use a continue while playing a world, you will get a lower value item at the end instead of those listed above. I think the item you get if you continued is two levels below the one in the list, i.e. you would get a Banana (10,000 points) for world 1, a Satsuma (20,000 points) for world 2, a Peach for world 3, etc. I need to check this though.
Unlike Bubble Bobble, you do not earn and points for popping bubbles that don't contain a monster. You also do not get other items appearing to pick up for more points. This means that the total points that you can earn is easily calculated based on how many monsters you pop and in what sized chains.
Your score at the end of a world will be a total of:
Bubbles containing the letters to spell "EXTEND" are spread out across the levels of a world. If you collect all of these bubbles in a world then you spell "EXTEND" and will get an extra life, the same as in the original Bubble Bobble game. Collecting all of these will also upgrade that world's power-up. You'll get one upgrade for collecting all the letters in normal mode, and a further upgrade for collecting them again in hard mode.
These bubbles appear in the same place on the same screens each time, but will disappear after a certain amount of time. In "normal" mode, the amount of time is quite generous, but in "extreme" mode it can be a challenge to get to them before they disappear.
For the easy mode worlds, this is where the letters appear:
| World/Level | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 1 | E | X | T | E | N | D | ||||
| 2 | E | X | T | E | N | D | ||||
| 3 | E | X | T | E | N | D | ||||
| 4 | E | X | T | E | N | D | ||||
| 5 | E | X | T | E | N | D |
Hard mode is coming soon.
Completing a world will unlock a bubble power-up that can be selected when playing. These are saved against your profile (at least they are on the Switch), so once you have unlocked them then you can use them again and again. A power-up can be upgraded by completing the EXTEND letters for the world on which you got that power-up. You will get one level upgrade for completing it in easy mode and another level for hard mode.
When you select a power-up, your character will wear gloves and goggles of a particular colour to enable that power-up.
| World | Power-up | Action | Outfit | Level 1 | Level 2 | Max |
| 1 | Long Shot | Blow bubbles further | Brown | 5 | 15 | 20 |
| 2 | Thunder bubble | Blow lightning bubbles that zap everything in a line when burst | Olive Green | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| 3 | Bomb bubble | Blow bubbles that explode after 10 seconds | Purple | 5 | 10 | 15 |
| 4 | Stop Wind | Stop air currents for a short time | Green | 3 | 5 | 10 |
| 5 | Dash | Quick movement that allows you to run through enemies | Blue | 10 | 20 | 30 |
When you have used your power-up abilities, you can replenish them by picking up fruit. A big fruit will replenish one power-up point, and it will take a few small fruits to do the same.
As mentioned before, when you pop a chain of bubbled monsters, more valuable items will drop if the chain is longer. This gives a double increase in points for longer chains because not only are you getting more valuable items, but there are more of these items too. Once you get to a chain length of 7 or more, these will all give you the same diamonds. So from that point on it is only the increase in the number of items that you get, rather than the individual items also being worth more.
The longest chain that you pop on a level also determine the type of items that you will get when you finish that level. If your longest chain dropped peaches during the level, then you will get peaches when you finish the level. if your longest chain dropped diamonds, then you will get diamonds at the end, etc. You will get up to 12 of these items at the end of the level, along with up to three large deserts or crowns. If you take a long time to finish the level then the number of these items will decrease.
So if you finish a level quickly enough to get all of the end of level items, then based on your longest chain, the chain is worth:
This gives us a table of the points that you will get for each chain length:
| Chain Length | Fruit | Fruit value | Big fruit value | Total value |
| 1 | Banana | 100 | 1,000 | 4,300 |
| 2 | Orange | 200 | 2,000 | 8,800 |
| 3 | Peach | 400 | 4,000 | 18,000 |
| 4 | Watermelon | 800 | 8,000 | 36,800 |
| 5 | Grapes | 1,600 | 16,000 | 75,200 |
| 6 | Pineapple | 3,200 | 32,000 | 153,600 |
| 7 | Diamond | 6,400 | 64,000 | 313,600 |
| 8 | Diamond | 6,400 | 64,000 | 320,000 |
| 9 | Diamond | 6,400 | 64,000 | 326,400 |
| 10 | Diamond | 6,400 | 64,000 | 332,800 |
| 11 | Diamond | 6,400 | 64,000 | 339,200 |
| 12 | Diamond | 6,400 | 64,000 | 345,600 |
| 13 | Diamond | 6,400 | 64,000 | 352,000 |
| 14 | Diamond | 6,400 | 64,000 | 358,400 |
| 15 | Diamond | 6,400 | 64,000 | 364,800 |
This gives us a graph that looks like this:
At the end of a world, you will be awarded a bonus for the larget chain of bubbled monsters that you popped together on that world. The larger the chain, the more points you will get. The actual bonus varies depending on which world you are playing.
Here is a table with some values I have noted. If anyone has more, please let me know.
| World/Length | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 1 | 15,000 | 40,000 | 50,000 | 55,000 | 60,000 | |||||
| 2 | 50,000 | 55,000 | ||||||||
| 3 | 55,000 | |||||||||
| 4 | 100,000 | 110,000 | 120,000 | |||||||
| 5 | 150,000 | 165,000 | 180,000 |
| World/Length | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 |
| 1 | 96,000 | 144,000 | |||||||||||
| 2 | 148,500 | 202,500 | 202,500 | ||||||||||
| 3 | 112,000 | 182,000 | |||||||||||
| 4 | |||||||||||||
| 5 |
The faster you finish a world, the bigger your time bonus will be. I have recorded quite a lot of time bonuses from the Easy worlds, but fewer from the Hard worlds. These give linear graphs, so it should be relatively easy to figure out bonuses for other finishing times.
If anyone has more stats for these, please let me know.
Pop bubbled monsters in the biggest chains that you can to get more points. Sometimes there are obvious ways to collect all monsters on the screen into one chain, which is the best way to do it. Sometimes that is not possible though.
Get all the power-ups. Collect all the EXTEND bubbles to get power-ups. Can you do a few runs focussed on just getting EXTEND bubbles and not worrying about long chains, etc, because once you get the power-ups, they will persist and you can use them whenever you like.
Figure out which power-ups are useful on which worlds. Playing with multiple players means that different players can select different power-ups for extra effect.