A new unofficial remaster has just been released for the C64 port of Taito's Bubble Bobble, and it's available to download now for free from itch.io.
Released in 1987, the original Commodore 64 port of Bubble Bobble is considered by many fans of the classic arcade game to be a wonderful conversion of the iconic title, with the Manchester-based developer Software Creations having done a great job at the time of translating Taito's original game over to the popular 8-bit computer.
Publications like ACE, Zzap64, Computer and Video Games, and The Games Machine, for instance, all gave it incredibly high scores around the time of its original release, with Computer and Video Games describing it as "addictive as bubble gum and as long lasting", while The Games Machine remarked that Software Creations deserve "hearty congratulations" for their efforts in bringing it from the arcade into people's living rooms.
With that in mind, you may be wondering, then, why anyone would feel the need to remaster the game in the modern day, with the original version seemingly being sufficient enough for most people's tastes. And to answer that, we need to introduce you to Davide Bottino, a pixel artist, journalist, and homebrew developer who has a penchant for fixing up classic games.
According to Bottino, in a description on the remastered port's itch.io page, seeing Bubble Bobble was "love at first sight" and the original C64 version of Bubble Bubble is the version he has the "fondest memories" of. However, he still doesn't consider it a perfect port.
This is due to the game's simplified mechanics and the departures from the original graphics. As a result, he wanted to create a version to further "bridge the aesthetic and stylistic gap with the original" and make the game "shine like never before on modern screens". This has resulted in the release of a new title called Bubble Bobble Remastered, which was published online yesterday (October 6th).
The remaster, according to Bottino, is technically "a hack of the original program rather than a complete rewrite". It features new sprites for many of the characters, alongside various fixes, and a new loading image and rendition of the classic arcade theme.
You can download the game here, which is also where you'll find a complete list of what's new.