| | Bubble Strategy
Sure, everyone here at Xbox.com HQ is ga-ga over ESPN NFL 2K5 and its low, low suggested retail price of $19.99. And the Platinum Hits line continues to swell with new family games like SpongeBob SquarePants™: Battle for Bikini Bottom and other amazing values. But, if you cornered most of us and demanded to know what upcoming twenty-dollar game had us truly climbing the walls with impatient anticipation, it would be Majesco’s Ultra Bust-A-Move, the latest incarnation of a game that’s been an arcade and console classic for years (and is, as the saying goes, huge in Japan).
Only you can stop the ball invasion!
Ball Busting is Fun
Why this game? Play it once, and you’ll see. It’s a puzzle game that will immediately remind you of classics like Tetrisor Dr. Mario, but there the similarities (other than addictiveness) end. You play as one of a dozen wacky (but identical, gameplay-wise) characters who must shoot balls at never-ending lines of bubbles that are closing in on you like some kind of crazy invaders from space. You have a finite amount of time to shoot the ball, billiard-style, at the encroaching bubble horde. Each normal ball comes in several different colors (special balls behave differently; we’ll get to them in a minute), and if you stick the ball to two or more other balls of the same color, they’ll all disappear. Simple, right? Wrong. First, it ain’t easy to make those shots without the handy shot guide-line you get in the first round of any competiton. Second, those balls aren’t just in color—they also come in a rainbow of other types—like, er, rainbow balls. 
Compete on a single Xbox® or over Xbox Live™.
Meet the Balls
Carefully target your ball shot, and these specialty balls will either help or hinder you accordingly: - Normal Balls: These come in multiple colors. When you connect three or more of these balls of the same color, they’ll all disappear. You can see what color you’re about to shoot by checking the firing chamber, and see what color is coming after that by checking the “on deck” area.
- Rainbow Balls: These look like a glass sphere with a rainbow inside. If a ball next to a rainbow ball pops (which requires at least three same-color balls to be connected in the first place, remember) the rainbow ball turns that color, allowing you to make a much bigger string—and if there are rainbow balls together already, look out!
- Star Balls: These spheres-with-a-star-in-them are the strangest. Hit one with a ball of any color, and if a ball of that same color is touching the star ball, it will pop (leaving the star ball in place). It’s like a prism that refracts balls.
- Bomb Balls: This aptly-named ball explodes when it hits another ball, taking out any others around it in the blast. You can easily get rid of those pesky fulcrum and nuisance balls this way, and if you really want to do damage, make sure the bomb ball is surrounded.
- Metal Balls: Shooting this ball, which sort of resembles a floating mine, is like sending a bowling ball into a row of carefully stacked dominoes. It rolls on through all balls it encounters, until it hits a fulcrum ball or the wall, whichever comes first.
- Fulcrum Balls: This ball will stop the metal ball juggernaut, but otherwise it’s pretty much a space-holder. If balls around it are all popped, it disappears.
- Nuisance Balls: Yes, it certainly is. The nuisance, or “Mister Yuck,” ball is there to get in the way of the others. Get rid of it by popping all the balls around it, but don’t sweat getting rid of them all—you still clear the stage if you have some nuisance balls left, as long as all the others are gone.
Nuisance balls are a real nuisance.
My editor just informed me that these are bubbles, not balls, which makes more sense—balls don’t stick together, usually, but bubbles do. So okay, they’re bubbles. But, balls are funnier, you have to admit. By Ben Barker |
