What seems like a random appearance of an item or special enemy may actually be something you can manipulate to your advantage, if you find the secret of the sequence.
Indeed, astute slot machine players have, in the past, been able to work this to their advantage when playing fruit machine/slot machine type casino games.īubble Bobble on the other hand, uses this pseudo-randomness to its advantage. The offshoot of this is that seemingly random numbers generated by a computer often fall into a pattern. Any random number has to come from somewhere. A computer isn’t self aware, you can’t simply ask it to “choose” a number.
#Bubble bobble sprites generator#
When random isn’t random Learning to manipulate the games psudo-random number generator is key to high scores.Īsk any computer scientist about random number generation and they will tell you that generating truly random numbers on a computer is not a trivial thing to do. To understand why, we have to know a little bit about some of the magic behind the game and just how those bubbles really bobble. However, even using MAME or buying your own JAMMA board might not get you the Bubble Bobble experience Mitsuji intended. Debate rages online as to which is the best home version, but for the real experience you should definitely look to the arcade. The game was ported to dozens of home systems spanning several generations. It was a game you could enjoy as a casual player, depositing a coin to pass ten minutes, or as a core player, spending all of your hard earned pocket money mastering the games many stages. Furthermore, like most great video games, the game has plenty of hidden secrets, strategies and techniques.
![bubble bobble sprites bubble bobble sprites](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EjcNMc8WoAAyCKc.png)
The simple sounding concept is made into something really magical thanks to the games superb presentation, excellent graphics and catchy music. To clear a screen you simply defeat all the enemies. Luckily, the enemies in the game can be defeated by blowing a bubble around them and then bursting the bubble. The cave consists of 100 screens of platforms and enemies. You might consider two dragons fairly well equipped to take on monsters, but unlike conventional dragons however, the brothers can only blow bubbles. Super Mario Brothers may be regarded as the best and most influential platform game on home consoles, but when it comes to arcade platformers, gaming connoisseurs will often point to Bubble Bobble as being the best in the genre.ĭesigned in 1986 by the late Fukio Mitsuji, the game sees dragon brothers Bub and Bob (full names Bubblun and Bobblun) venture into the “Cave of Monsters” in order to rescue their girlfriends who have been captured by the evil Baron Von Blubba. I swapped the good shift register in, and the graphics problems are now fixed.The games crisp cartoon sprites have lost none of their charm. It turns out not many arcade games used 74LS194’s in their design (likely they became integrated in custom graphics ASIC’s instead). I tested them out of circuit (since my comparitor couldn’t analyze them), and finally I found the fault! One of the 4 registers was bad.Īfter digging through nearly my ENTIRE parts boards inventory, I finally found a donor IC on a dead Double Dragon board. I came across a bank of 4x 74LS194 shift registers. I decided to not give up hope however, and to look into the other TTL chips I was unable to test with my Logic Comparitor. All 5x 74ls163’s passed the TTL test in my Xeltek, so unfortunately the fault was not there. They are a bit tricky to test with a logic comparitor, so I opted to test them out of circuit. After explaining the symptom, and what I had already tested, he suggested looking into the 74ls163 4-bit counters near the graphics roms. At this point I was pretty stumped, and decided to email my good friend Caius. The PCB is in really nice shape, so I knew the issue wasn’t physical damage. I investigated the roms, the ram and most of the TTL logic IC’s, all of the usual suspects tested OK. It was especially noticeable on certain enemy types, quite distracting from the gameplay. You can see the pink pixels to the right of Bub and the baby blue pixels near the fruits. When rendered “horizontally mirrored”, extra odd-colored pixels were being drawn with the sprite. When the sprites rendered “normal” direction, they were fine. Upon testing the PCB, the fault presented itself.
![bubble bobble sprites bubble bobble sprites](https://i.imgur.com/FXyWSUN.jpg)
The seller mentioned simply that there was an issue with the sprites. I purchased a “mostly working” original Taito Bubble Bobble PCB for a good price, with the hopes of repairing it and adding it to my collection.