Bust-A-Move Deluxe [PSP]

Bust-A-Move has been part of the puzzle landscape for years. With characters borrowed from the classic Bubble Bobble and gameplay that's part-Tetris, part-Columns, the series has proven itself several times over. The PSP is a natural home for puzzle games, so this translation should be a perfect fit. But a couple of limitations keep Bust-A-Move from fully proving its worth once more.

The gameplay looks a lot like the popular PC title Snood, which actually debuted after Bust-A-Move first appeared. A game board is filled with orbs of varying colors; by shooting orbs from a launcher mounted at the center of the bottom edge, players must make clusters of at least three identically colored balloons to clear them from the board. Shots can be banked off the walls, adding a level of billiard skill to the prerequisites. Power-ups appear, and the orbs steadily march downward, threatening the launcher.

First up, Bust-A-Move looks great, with all sorts of weird pseudo-supernatural detail in the background. But all the window dressing takes up a lot of screen space, and the actual play area is rather small. That really becomes apparent when trying to ricochet a delicate shot off the wall and into a hard to hit spot. The sound is typically good, though the plinky primary music theme gets old, especially as the tempo begins to race.

A load of alternate modes are packed in; the best is certainly Ghost, in which all shots must be banked off the walls. Shoot dead-on, and the bubble will simply pass through everything until it rebounds from a wall, at which point it behaves "normally." You'll fire a lot of ceiling rebounds and not a few very tricky bank shots. Miss a shot, though, and a heart meter fills -- five stops and it's game over. The mode is more demanding than usual, but also more fun.

Also included is Shot, in which the board must be cleared in a single shot, and SeeSaw, where the balance of bubbles on the board can tip it to one side. There are other variants as well which hide the color of bubbles on the board or focus upon how many you've knocked off the main mass. These latter offerings are best for multiplayer, as fortunes can change quickly. If only an infrastructure mode was available; connections are limited to ad-hoc only.

There is one failure in the interface: the guide line, which shows where a shot will land, doesn't stay on. Supposedly it can be toggled on or off from the main menu, but turn it on and it will be in place for only the first level played. After that, poof! With the limited screen real estate, players may well want the option, and it seems like pure oversight that it works so poorly.

Consequently, Bust-A-Move Deluxe is a middling port, fun for masters of the game, but potentially frustrating for less skilled players. The alternate modes add unexpected value, especially since Ghost is so much fun, but not enough to dethrone the PSP's best puzzlers.