Bust-A-Move '99
Platform: Nintendo 64
Media: Cartridge
Genre: Puzzle
Release Year: 1999
Developer: Taito
Publisher: Taito, Acclaim
Players: Single player, multiplayer
Alternate Title: Puzzle Bobble 64
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Description

Think you've busted with the best? Not until you've faced Bust-A-Move '99! With intense 4-player competition, all new graphics, and create-a-level mode, you've never busted bubbles like these! And with eight new mysterious characters to save, you'll be bustin' like crazy to solve all the puzzles and send them home!

Characters

In the single player modes, there is nothing to distinguish the characters. However in two player modes, the characters differ by the bubbles they can place onto the other players screen.

* Bub and Bob are the series' main protagonists. Both are anthropomorphic dinosaurs- Bub is green whereas Bob is blue. Bub is the elder of the two and is known to be energetic; Bob is much quieter. Although claimed to both be the heroes, Bub features much more prominently.

* Musashi a warrior from Musashi no Ken - Tadaima Shugyo Chu (another game by Taito) who is bearing a resemblance to Ryu.

* Prettio a small green and white doll who at the end of her story is caught from a toy-crane machine by one of Marina's friends and is cared for.

* Twinkle/Chincle a young girl dressed in a jester's costume. At the end of her story, she is shown to be a normal schoolgirl.

* Marina

* Luna

* Blaster Man/SSB

* Jack

* Drank

Where Bust-A-Move 99 for the N64 really shines is in the three- or four-player modes. These modes are engaging enough to keep you playing after you've long since tired of a simple two-player game. One complaint, however, is that (in what appears to be an obvious developer oversight) you're stuck with four game spaces on the TV monitor, whether you're in a three-player or four-player game. Because of this, the screens are really tiny, with silly pictures of your respective character under your playing space taking up about one fifth of your panel of the monitor. This makes no sense. Clearly, resolution issues were at play, but why not just present three spaces for a three-player game? The N64 version, like the PlayStation game, suffered from the occasional cluttered background, making the bubbles occasionally difficult to see. However, this wasn't consistently the case and therefore didn't really damage gameplay. And aside from a few sound glitches between levels, the cartridge didn't do much to damage the music. Could it, anyway?