Bubble Bobble

In the game, each player controls one of the two dragons. Players can move along platforms, fall to lower ones, and jump to higher ones and over gaps. Each level is limited to a single screen, with no left/right scrolling. However, if a screen has gaps in its bottom edge, players can fall through these and reappear at the top.

Each level has a certain number of enemies that must be defeated in order to advance. The players must blow bubbles to trap the enemies and then burst these bubbles by colliding with them. Magic items appear from time to time and grant special abilities and advantages when picked up. Special bubbles occasionally appear that can be burst to attack enemies with fire, water, or lightning.

Brothers Bub and Bob are two happy go lucky dragons [sic] living in a magical forest. "Baron Von Blubba" has kidnapped the brothers' girlfriends. Bub and Bob must finish 100 levels in the Cave of Monsters in order to rescue them. At the end of the game after fighting Super Drunk on level 100 in cooperative mode, it is revealed Bub, Bob, and their girlfriends are humans transformed by magic and that Bub and Bob's parents were kidnapped as well.

Bubble Bobble was designed by Fukio Mitsuji, a Japanese game designer at Taito. A fan of arcade games by Namco, specifically Xevious, Mitsuji felt that Taito's output in comparison was lackluster and of poor quality. Mitsuji hoped that he could help push the company to produce higher-quality arcade titles. His first game was the four-screen racer Super Dead Heat in 1985, followed by the shoot 'em up Halley's Comet the same year. After work on these two games was completed, Mitsuji decided to make his next project a platform game, featuring cute characters and a more comical setting compared to his previous titles.

Mitsuji wanted the game to be exhilarating and to appeal towards a female audience. Thinking about what kind of things women like to draw or sketch, Mitsuji created an extensive list of over 100 ideas, and after a process of elimination, selected bubbles as the core game mechanic. He liked the idea of the screen being filled with bubbles, and thought that popping them all at once would provide a thrilling sensation to the player. His initial idea was to have a robot with a spike on its head to pop bubbles.

In Japan, Game Machine listed Bubble Bobble as the second most successful table arcade cabinet of October 1986, behind Taito's own Arkanoid. It went on to be the fifth highest-grossing table arcade game of 1987 in Japan. In the United Kingdom, Bubble Bobble was the top-grossing arcade game from April to June 1987. The home conversions were also successful in the UK, where the game appeared on the sales charts for several years. The ZX Spectrum budget re-release topped the UK charts in July 1991.

The arcade version received positive reviews from Computer and Video Games and Crash. Mean Machines gave the Game Boy port of the game a score of 91%, noting that, while some changes had been made, the game played identical to the original arcade port and "provides much addiction and challenge". The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly stated that the Game Gear version is a faithful conversion of the original which works well in portable form. They particularly praised the simplicity of the gameplay concept and the graphics, and the two-player link option.

The game has had at least 30 official ports to a large array of computers and consoles throughout the decades.

A remastered version named Bubble Bobble Old & New was made for Game Boy Advance, which also included the original arcade version. It was released in Japan by MediaKite and internationally by Empire Interactive.