Review: Puzzle Bobble Everybubble! – Bubbles Over With Charm (And Useless Bots)

PAYONPAH!

One of the biggest games to dominate the scene of the golden age of arcades was Bubble Bobble, a cute Japanese action platformer centered around little dinosaurs that could shoot bubbles out of their mouths. While that original game eventually went on to spawn a ton of sequels and ports that iterated on the concept, it also led to the development of spin-offs like Puzzle Bobble in 1994. Ditching the platforming roots, this new game put an action-focused twist on tile-matching and quickly garnered a following of its own. Now Taito has seen fit to continue the legacy with Puzzle Bobble Everybubble!, a new entry that brings new ideas.

Puzzle Bobble follows a relatively basic gameplay formula wherein you fire colored bubbles from the bottom of the screen at a mass of bubbles at the top of the screen, which disappear when your shots produce a group of three or more like-colored bubbles. A big part of the challenge comes from being constantly under pressure to perform, as bubbles are usually either slowly pressing down on you from above, or you’re only given a limited amount of time to clear everything out. Couple this with the fact that you can never quite tell exactly where your shot is going to land, and it’s an experience that straddles a fine line between being stressful and relaxing. Mistakes pile up fast and make it that much harder to make the shots you intend to, but playing things too slow and methodical means that you’re at risk of failing or, at the very least, receiving a lower ranking for that stage.

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LEGO Expands Its Retro Gaming Collection With A $270 PAC-MAN Arcade Set

Waka waka waka.

After being spotted online at the end of last month, LEGO has today given us our first proper look at the upcoming PAC-MAN Arcade set, and it’s a beauty.

Joining the likes of the Atari 2600 and the much sought-after NES in LEGO’s collection of retro gaming goodies, this arcade cabinet will release to mark the game’s 43rd anniversary on 4th June (available slightly earlier for Lego VIP members on 1st June). It consists of 2651 pieces and will set you back £229.99 / $269.99.

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Guide: Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom: Where Does It Fit In The Zelda Timeline?

A Lon Lon time ago…

Never mind Ganon, anyone who has ever been brave enough to look will tell you that the true Dark Beast of the Zelda franchise is its timeline. Up until Skyward Sword, many of us were happy enough to form our own theories about how the games slotted together, or just play blissfully unaware of the intricacies of how one flowed into the next. Then the Hyrule Historia came along in 2011 and shook everything up.

Instead of one cohesive timeline, this official tie-in book suggests that there are in fact three separate strands to keep track of after the events of Ocarina of Time — ‘The Hero is Defeated’ and ‘The Hero is Triumphant (Child and Adult eras)’. And this doesn’t account for any of the games that release after Skyward Sword, so we have only been able to speculate on where the likes of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom slot into the mix. Simply put, it gets really complicated, really fast.

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Poll: Box Art Brawl: Duel – The Legend Of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

The other boat one.

Welcome back to another edition of Box Art Brawl!

Before we dive into this week’s face-off, let’s quickly recap what happened last time when we asked you to pick a favourite design between the two regional cover art options for Beyond Good and Evil. This was a slightly closer-fought contest than we have seen in recent weeks, but the European cover ultimately came out on top with 59% of the vote, while North America took 41%.

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Video: Extended Gameplay Of Warhammer’s New Retro FPS Boltgun, Out Next Week

Get ready to obliterate the daemons of Chaos.

If you’re eager for more 90s-style FPS experiences similar to Doom and Quake, one to be on the lookout for next week is Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun.

It was announced for the Switch and multiple other platforms last June, and offers up a “hardcore, sprite-based experience” in the boots of a Space Marine. It’s arriving on 23rd May and ahead of the Switch eShop launch, Focus Entertainment and Auroch Digital have released some new extended gameplay footage.

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Eiji Aonuma Has Completed Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom “About 20 Times”

He apparently “never felt bored once”.

If you think one playthrough of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is impressive, series producer Eiji Aonuma recently revealed he has already completed the game “about 20 times”.

In part five of Nintendo’s latest ‘Ask the Developer’ series, Aonuma mentioned how there were times when he had to rush ahead and clear the main story from “start to finish” when testing the game. His advice though is to take your time and don’t just rush straight to the ending.

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Zelda: Cadence Of Hyrule Dev ‘Brace Yourself Games’ Confirms Layoffs

Up to half of its workforce may be gone.

Canadian indie developer Brace Yourself Games – perhaps best-known within the Nintendo community for its rhythmic hit Cadence of Hyrule – has reduced the size of its workforce.

Brace Yourself Games shared the following statement with PC Gamer, confirming the “incredibly difficult decision”. In addition to this, it mentioned how it would be providing severance packages and support services to assist those impacted.

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Zelda’s Tears Of The Kingdom VA Took Inspiration From The Hit HBO Show “Game Of Thrones”

Emilia Clarke’s character influenced her performance.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom expands on the story building first seen in the 2017 hit Breath of the Wild with even more cinematic cutscenes and many of the main characters (excluding the protagonist Link) now have even more dialogue.

Speaking to Axios recently about her return to the role of Princess Zelda, the English voice of the character and American Canadian VA Patricia Summersett revealed how she drew from an “amalgam of different inspirations” for Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.

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