Bubble Bobble (DOS)

Bubble Bobble
Developer: NovaLogic Publisher: Taito Platform: DOS Released in US: 1989 This game has hidden development-related text. This game has debugging material. This game has a hidden level select.

Bubble Bobble for DOS is an adequate port of the arcade game, containing an actual soundtrack if you had a sound device, adequate controls and fairly decent frame rates.

Version String

While this string can be found in BUBBLE.EXE at 0x200, it's not shown in the game itself and there's no documented command prompt to show this.

(c) 1989 Taito Software Inc. 1.01 09/27/89 

Debug Mode

The game checks for a file named BETA.DAT. If it succeeds, it checks for the following lines:

FDPnP
FAAaQ
FDDhOE
FAWNA
FAWaCk
FBXCP

For each line, it also checks for the standard DOS newline for each new line. In the order the cheats are shown above, the following effects can happen:

1. FDPnP - This shows the approximate time to render the next frame. The lower the number, the higher the number of frames that are rendered.
2. FAAaQ - This shows which special bubbles can appear in a level.
3. FDDhOE - Press Alt and A to show how the bubbles float in a level.
4. FAWNA - Press F7 to restore Player 1's health or F8 to restore Player 2's.
5. FAWaCk - A level select cheat. Press j to skip 10 levels back, J to skip 10 levels ahead, m 1 level back, and M 1 level ahead. You can use both Shift keys or the Caps Lock key on your keyboard to go from a lower case j to an upper case J.
6. FBXCP - When the game crashes, it dumps information to COREDUMP.BB to show what happened at the time of the crash.

It will also show an internal version number on the controls set-up screen.

(Source: S&F Prod.)