Last week, I read a few English and Japanese forum posts and blog entries that said that Fukio Mitsuji (MTJ) died in December 2008. I think it must be true because there are a lot of these writings. I only just found out. He was one of the creative staff at Taito during the 1980s, and was the creator and designer of Bubble Bobble, Rainbow Islands, Volfied, Halley's Comet, Syvalion, and more.
Bubble Bobble is definitely one of my all-time favourite arcade games. I played it in the arcades and relentlessly on the C64 when a port was made (my brother and I eventually completed it, even with its 10 credit limit!), and emulated in the compilations for PS2. We've finished that game so many times, so many versions! Still to this day, if I see a Bubble Bobble arcade machine, I'm compelled to play it, though I own these home versions. We played through some of the sequels (Bubble Symphony and Bubble Memories) to "best" ending just a few months ago.
Bubble Bobble is simple, it's cute, it's easy enough to get a good play out of one credit (I usually get as far as level 35 "Jump" on one credit), yet it's quite hard to get to the end. (oh, I used so many credits...) It has secrets to uncover, codes to enter, and strongly encourages you to play with a friend on player 2.
I remember learning so much from watching other people play; some of the obscure secrets. It really felt like a collaborative arcade game, sometimes even when you weren't playing.
Some of the later levels require you to exploit game glitches to win (the stages that are almost completely covered with "background" and you fall through the stage, etc), which curiously validates that aspect of the game - it puts the message across that yes they know the game does that thing that seems weird, it's supposed to, and you should know about this as a player as an advanced way to play the game.
I guess these things are down to the rest of the Taito staff who worked on the game as well, I'm just gushing about how much I like Bubble Bobble.
We played the C64 port of Rainbow Islands to death too, though I think I cheated in order to finish that game (and I think the port was missing a lot of the secrets from the arcade machine).
