For example, on level 1, if one manages to dilly-dally enough to blow and pop 35 bubbles and bounce 15 times before clearing it, level 2 will spawn shoes, level 3 will spawn blue candy, and level 4 will spawn green candy.
This relationship is the only one I'm familiar with. Shoes have priority over blue candy, which has priority over green candy. The four most important item triggers (the only ones I'm actually familiar with) are the shoes (15 bubble bounces, granting increased move speed), green candy (35 bubbles blown, granting increased bubble blowing rate), blue candy (35 bubbles popped, increasing bubble range), and the umbrella (20 water bubbles popped, skipping 3-5 levels, though which amount of levels you skip I believe IS random). Our run is recorded from a fresh power on to prevent such exploitations, as it is possible to get a game over and start over, keeping the counter where it is at. These counters are reset as soon as the game is powered off. Note, however, that even if the item doesn't actually spawn in time due to level completion or game over, it will still count as having spawned. This continues until there are no more items in line. After that, the counter for the spawned item resets and the item next in line spawns on the next level (provided the players don't meet the requirements for a higher priority item before that next level).
If multiple conditions are met, then the item of highest priority spawns first. Each of the magic items has an in-game counter associated with it, and when that counter is met, the next level will spawn said item. Since this is a bad ending run, though, this information is irrelevant to us (however, a future experiment for us may be to try a good ending run).Īs far as strategy goes, the most important thing about running Bubble Bobble is that it's surprisingly mostly NOT random with its magic items. You must have both players alive to trigger the good ending at the end of the battle. However, defeating this version of the boss alone doesn't net you the good ending. The secret road is 13 or so more levels that culminates in the same boss as a bad ending run. What separates the good ending from the bad ending is that on level 99, there is a crystal that summons a magic door to the secret road. My brother is the only one who has about as much experience with the game as me (after all, we both grew up with the game). I thought about potential partners, but the choice was obvious. This made me think about running it, but I knew a 1 player run would be impossibly difficult (the game is hard enough as it is, to speed run it by myself would be murder!). Later, I was playing Bubble Bobble with a friend, a game that I've literally grown with. I decided, however, that while I wasn't bad at the game, I was incredibly lazy and didn't keep up with it.
My first idea was to run Rocket Knight Adventures. I generally wanted to run an old, classic game that wasn't on SDA yet so I could finally fill in that gap in the annals of awesomeness. You never believed you had it in you, but I knew that you were the only one awesome enough to back me up in this run! Finally, I'd like to thank everyone else who supported our efforts.Īs for the inspiration for speed-running Bubble Bobble, in particular? It came on a whim. More importantly, though, I'd like to thank Brandon for sticking with me throughout this run. First of all, I would like to thank Romscout for inspiring me to attempt to speedrun games in general with his inspirational Mario RPG efforts.