Bubble Bobble (Arcade)

They're Bubblin' and Bobblin' all over the place.

Unused Graphics
The clover, cookie(?) and flower graphics have three unused frames that give the items a smoother transition from black.

Unused Sounds
Three sounds in the game are unused. Wow!!!

100,000 Point Bonus


There's a 100,000 point bonus for popping multiple enemies. This would ostensibly be used after popping 8 enemies at once, but there's no round in the game with more than seven. Indeed, there's only space in RAM for seven enemies max.

Put the following code in MAME's bublbobl.xml cheat file and activate it to get this bonus. Please note that due to a mistake in the multiple-enemy kill table, this won't give 100,000 points, just 10!  maincpu.pb@F677=08

Unused Bubble Drops
Two of the game's end-of-level bubble drops are unused. The graphics for these items were overwritten sometime in development, so they now use the Red Crown / Level 50 Door item graphics. Put this code in MAME's bublbobl.xml cheat file to make these items drop:  Red Crown Brown Door maincpu.pb@F464=01 maincpu.pb@F465=param

Round 100 Placeholder Setup
Round 100 has a full set of enemies in its level data, just in case the game fails to load the Super Drunk boss routine. Put the following code in MAME's bublbobl.xml cheat file to see this setup:  maincpu.mw@10637=CA80 maincpu.mw@12854=C080 maincpu.mw@10637=CA63 maincpu.mw@12854=C063

Game Version
A version string can be found on all variants of the game. This is located on a78-05 for the Worldwide releases, a78-21 for the US 1.0 version, and a78-24 for US 5.1.

MCU Build Date
A second build date (and what is presumably the internal name for the Motorola MC68705P5 Microcontroller) is stored at the end of the MCU at. Unlike the game version, this is identical for all versions of the game. BR10 29.JUN,1986 This is what the "BR10" text on Round 59 refers to. So that's one mystery solved.