Well, I can’t help it if you’ve never heard of a bubble ghost. Everyone else knows that ghosts spend their time blowing bubbles. If you didn’t take in this bit of wisdom along with your strained baby food, then blame your parents.

Actually, ghosts don’t blow bubbles. They create bubbles from soapy water, or whatever that stuff is, and use their ghostly breath to push bubbles through 35 rooms (or levels) of a dank and moldy laboratory. The ghost must complete the hazardous course before he can find eternal rest. At any rate, that’s what it says in Accolade’s documentation for its new game.

Blame the bubble ghost for the game’s hazards—the apparition is the spirit of a crazy inventor who haunts his own laboratory. He filled his lab with crazy inventions, and, for some strange reason, they all have sharp edges. (Maybe it was one of his inventions that got him into this mess.) It’s up to you to help him blow his bubble under, over, around, and through 35 levels of insanity.

At the start of the game, you’ll be presented with a menu for choosing options for one or two players, sound on or off, and a practice mode that works with any level except number 35. My knowledge of the various obstacles comes almost exclusively from this last option and from watching my children play the game. I prefer not to say which level I reached on my own, but with the same number of dollars, I wouldn’t expect any change back at McDonald’s.

As the game begins, you find the ghost and a bubble floating in midair at the right side of a room with stone walls. Press your joystick’s fire button, and the ghost puffs his cheeks and blows the bubble across the room toward an opening. One puff won’t be enough, and you’ll have to follow the bubble by moving your ghost with the stick.

As you go through the opening, you’ll see your score advance. You get bonus points based on how few bubbles you used, whether you caused the ghost to blow so hard he got red in the face, and how much time it took to complete the level.

The first room is easy enough. Accolade starts you there to get you familiar with the game. From then on, prepare for frustration.

In the next room, a spinning object is in your path. You may be good enough to pass over it just at the right moment. It’s possible, but not likely. Instead, rotate your ghost 90 degrees, move him under the bubble, and blow the bubble upward. (If you rotate in the wrong direction, you’ll find yourself blowing at the floor. Not only is this counter productive, but it also makes you look stupid.)

If you blow too hard, the bubble will hit the ceiling and burst. So be ready to get above it and blow it downward. (Yes, I realize that now you’re blowing toward the floor, but this time it’s necessary.)

If the bubble touches anything, it will burst. The fact that many rooms have sharp objects means little, except for its psychological effect. You could just as easily pop your bubble against a down pillow as an industrial drill bit.

More meaningful hazards come in the form of electric fans that can alter your bubble’s course. To test your timing skills, you’ll encounter rooms with extremely narrow passages and intermittent laser beams.

At the start of the game, you receive six bubbles. Break a bubble, and you get another one, until you’ve depleted your supply of six.

At the end of a game—which comes very soon for some of us over the age of 13—you’ll have the chance to type your initials next to your score on a hall-of-fame board. You may have the chance, though I never did. My children, Mike and Kelly, filled the board with ridiculously high numbers that didn’t give their father a ghost of a chance.

That’s Bubble Ghost. It’s distinguished by good graphics; good animation; a theme song that, thankfully, can be toggled off; and a delightful ghost with a good range of expressions. It’s fun, frustrating, silly, challenging, ridiculous—all the things that make pure arcade games worth playing.

One note of caution: Animation and graphics of this quality use most of the memory locations of your 64; you’ll probably need to disconnect your printer and/or second disk drive before the game will run.

COMPUTE!'s Gazette January 1989

@COMPUTE!'s Gazette