''Bust-A-Move Bash!'' (formerly known as ''Bust-A-Move Revolution''), known in Europe as ''Bust-A-Move'', is a bubble shooter tile-matching video game released exclusively for the

Wii The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America and in December 2006 for most other regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major home game console, ...

, as part of the ''

Bust-a-Move internationally known as ''Bust-a-Move'', is a 1994 Tile-matching video game, tile-matching puzzle arcade game developed and published by Taito. It is based on the 1986 arcade game ''Bubble Bobble'', featuring characters and themes from that gam ...

'' series. It is the first ''Bust-a-Move'' game released on a Nintendo console after ''

Bust-a-Move 3000 , released as ''Super Bust-A-Move'' in Europe and North America, is a puzzle video game in the ''Puzzle Bobble'' series. It was developed by Taito, and released on November 27, 2000 by Acclaim Entertainment for the PlayStation 2, and by CyberF ...

'', released in 2003 on the

GameCube The is a home video game console developed and released by Nintendo in Japan on September 14, 2001, in North America on November 18, 2001, and in PAL territories in 2002. It is the successor to the Nintendo 64 (1996), and predecessor of the W ...

Gameplay

''Bust-A-Move Bash!'' incorporates the same gameplay principles and premise of prior games in the ''Bust-A-Move'' series, as a colorful bubble shooter. ''Bash'' features several different modes: puzzle, shooting, endless and a multiplayer mode. *In puzzle mode, the player completes levels by eliminating all on-screen bubbles, which is done by shooting a bubble at a cluster of bubbles of the same color. There are also special kinds of bubbles with different game-altering properties, such as star, flame and rainbow bubbles. There is also a bonus round after every 10 levels beaten, which will unlock one kind of the aforementioned special bubbles when completed successfully. *In shooting mode, bubbles of four colors will fly in from all sides of the screen and the player must shoot down whichever bubbles match the color of the on-screen cursor, using

Wii Remote The Wii Remote, also known colloquially as the Wiimote, is the primary game controller for Nintendo's Wii home video game console. An essential capability of the Wii Remote is its motion sensing capability, which allows the user to interact ...

pointer controls. *Endless mode is a

survival mode Survival mode, or horde mode, is a game mode in a video game in which the player must continue playing for as long as possible without dying in an uninterrupted session while the game presents them with increasingly difficult waves of challenges ...

where the player is challenged to destroy as many bubbles and collect as many jewels as possible before an encroaching mass of bubbles crosses a foul line. *Versus mode is the game's couch multiplayer mode, where up to eight players can compete to test their bubble-shooting skills on a single screen, scoring as many jewels as possible until time expires. For games involving five to eight players, the first four designated players will use Wii Remotes, while the remaining players use external controllers connected to them (the

Nunchuk is a traditional Okinawan martial arts weapon consisting of two sticks (traditionally made of wood), connected to each other at their ends by a short metal chain or a rope. It is approximately 30 cm (sticks) and 1 inch (rope). A person wh ...

or the

Classic Controller The is a game controller produced by Nintendo for the Wii home video game console. While it later featured some compatibility with the Wii U console, the controller was ultimately succeeded by the Wii U Pro Controller. In April 2014, Ninten ...

), which cannot be used in single-player modes.

Controls

For all modes except shooting mode, there are three control schemes involving the Wii Remote that are used to control the bubble shooter: baton, gun and easy-gun. Gun and easy gun utilize the pointer to determine the angle of the next shot, with easy gun displaying the pointer's cursor. Baton involves holding the Wii Remote upright and tilting it left or right to determine the shooting angle. The baton control scheme is the only control scheme available for multiplayer contestants using a Nunchuk, and the Classic Controller uses both

analog stick An analog stick (or analogue stick in British English), sometimes called a control stick or thumbstick, is an input device for a controller (often a game controller) that is used for two-dimensional input. An analog stick is a variation of a joy ...

s to aim the shooter. Bubble-swapping is mapped to the down button on the

d-pad A D-pad (short for directional pad or digital pad; officially referred to by Nintendo as a +Control Pad) is a flat, usually thumb-operated, often digital, four-way directional control with one button on each point, found on nearly all modern vi ...

for the Wii Remote and Classic Controller, or a downward flick of the Nunchuk's analog stick.

Development

Ken Gold, the vice president of Majesco marketing, stated that Majesco wanted ''Bash!'' to "maximize the intuitive nature of the Wii controller to create a revolutionary offering of the highly popular ''Bust-A-Move'' franchise", eventually leading to the idea of leveraging the Wii Remote's expansion capabilities to allow up to eight players to compete on a single screen by having two players share one Wii controller by each holding one of its two individual parts - the remote itself or its external controller.

Reception

''Bust-A-Move Bash!'' received "mixed" reviews according to the

review aggregation A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

References

External links