Preview By: Siou Choy
Developer:	Ubi Soft
Publisher:	Ubi Soft
Genre:	Puzzle
Est. Release:	October 2002
Posted:	9-3-02

Hey, man, want some stuff? Yeah, check it out. Looking for a puzzle gaming fix? Yeah, I’ll fix ya up real nice. Ubi Soft’s got just what you need: Super Bust A Move 2 for the Gamecube and Playstation 2. The sequel to the PS2’s Super Bust A Move will be released in October (for the PS2) then again in December (for the Gamecube). Trust me, you’ll be jonesing on this sh**.

Gameplay in Super Bust A Move 2 remains faithful to the series. You have to aim a colored bubble at an assortment of colored bubbles at the top of the screen, which continue to accumulate and descend. Attaching 3 bubbles of the same color bursts the bubbles, with your aim being to clear the screen of bubbles entirely or at least to last longer than your opponent. The premise is easy to understand and just challenging enough to execute, which is what makes it so damn addictive. Get set to lose countless hours of your life.

The game gives you 12 bizarre characters to choose from. And I do mean bizarre. Unlike the colorful, anime-style characters from previous Bust A Move series entries, these new characters look like the programmers were coming down from a very bad drug trip during the design stages. Overly cartoony and bright, the character design has gone from cute and amusing to just plain f*ed up.

If you’ve never played Bust A Move’s previous incarnations, there’s no need to worry. There is a training mode included in the game to help you learn the basics and practice (not that you’ll need much, it’s a fairly instinctive game). Edit mode allows the intrepid gamer to create his own puzzles and save them to the memory card to show off to their friends (if you really think they’ll care).

The arcade/single player mode allows gamers to work their way through several levels and stages to discover more about the characters in the game and the story behind them (not that you’d want to – they should have done this with Bust A Move 2 for the N64, if they wanted us to care). Battle mode lets you take on either your friends or the computer to see who’s your daddy in the puzzle gaming arena. A scalable difficulty level might make the game a bit more interesting and challenging for the Bust-A-Burned Out among us.

Anybody disappointed in the lack of animation in previous Bust A Move games (was anybody really that obsessed?) will have no cause to worry. Ubi Soft has stated that there will new animations included in the game in addition to featuring "the highest-resolution visuals".

With thousand of new puzzles found in the Super Bust A Move 2, gamers should be very happy when the game is released later this year.

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Box Art