The saga to find a colorblind-friendly Bust-A-Move game has led me to Bust-a-Move DS– Wait, how come this one is Bust-a-Move while the others are Bust-A-Move?? Get it together, Taito!
Let's do a quick rundown of what this game offers before getting into what I'm here for.
Before getting into the modes, can I just say I'm SO glad that you can choose the character to play Versus and Endless. I'm so tired to seeing Bub's mug when I'm trying to evaluate these games.
This game offers three modes: Puzzle, Versus, and Endless.
Puzzle offers a number of preset levels for you to play, similar to pretty much every other mode.
Versus reminds me a little bit like Tetris 99 where you're fighting a bunch of other people at once, but it's more like... Tetris 5 here, since you can only fight 4 opponents at once.
Finally, Endless. This one's a bit more interesting since you can adjust a couple settings like whether or not to allow certain special Bubbles like the Bowling Ball or Star Bubble, whether or not you want to allow "Chaining" (a new game mechanic that lets dropped bubbles "chain" into another set of bubbles to keep the pop action going), and most curiously, whether to the set the number of colors to 6, 7, or 8 max. This one intrigued me the most, so I checked it out and messed with it a little. Here's what I got.
Colorblindness Rating: D+
Since this game thankfully doesn't use the same SNES textures like the N64 or Genesis version, but with new sprites come new problems.
While I'm no longer having issues with yellow and orange bubbles, I'm now having issues telling apart the yellow/green and blue/purple bubble pairs since they share the same or similar pattern respectively. The game's rating isn't as low as the other entries since they're a little easier to tell apart than previous entries, but it is frustrating that I will inevitably mess up when I confuse a green for a yellow or a purple for a blue.
As for the number of color setting in the Endless mode, all it does is add Grey and Black bubbles, which don't really do anything to affect the rating as far as I'm concerned.
Overall, this finally shows some improvement! I want to see if other titles can do the same, so expect more Bust-A-Move reviews in the future.
Let's do a quick rundown of what this game offers before getting into what I'm here for.
Before getting into the modes, can I just say I'm SO glad that you can choose the character to play Versus and Endless. I'm so tired to seeing Bub's mug when I'm trying to evaluate these games.
This game offers three modes: Puzzle, Versus, and Endless.
Puzzle offers a number of preset levels for you to play, similar to pretty much every other mode.
Versus reminds me a little bit like Tetris 99 where you're fighting a bunch of other people at once, but it's more like... Tetris 5 here, since you can only fight 4 opponents at once.
Finally, Endless. This one's a bit more interesting since you can adjust a couple settings like whether or not to allow certain special Bubbles like the Bowling Ball or Star Bubble, whether or not you want to allow "Chaining" (a new game mechanic that lets dropped bubbles "chain" into another set of bubbles to keep the pop action going), and most curiously, whether to the set the number of colors to 6, 7, or 8 max. This one intrigued me the most, so I checked it out and messed with it a little. Here's what I got.
Colorblindness Rating: D+
Since this game thankfully doesn't use the same SNES textures like the N64 or Genesis version, but with new sprites come new problems.
While I'm no longer having issues with yellow and orange bubbles, I'm now having issues telling apart the yellow/green and blue/purple bubble pairs since they share the same or similar pattern respectively. The game's rating isn't as low as the other entries since they're a little easier to tell apart than previous entries, but it is frustrating that I will inevitably mess up when I confuse a green for a yellow or a purple for a blue.
As for the number of color setting in the Endless mode, all it does is add Grey and Black bubbles, which don't really do anything to affect the rating as far as I'm concerned.
Overall, this finally shows some improvement! I want to see if other titles can do the same, so expect more Bust-A-Move reviews in the future.