Bust-A-Move/Puzzle Bobble difficulty?

mhkohne

n00b
10 Year Member
Joined
Sep 16, 2010
Posts
40
Does the difficulty setting on the MVS for Bust-A-Move actually do anything? I was poking at it earlier today, and at least in the first few levels it doesn't seem to have any effect?
 

Neodogg

Dogg-Father,
20 Year Member
Joined
Nov 27, 2002
Posts
5,589
well when you suck, you probably don't notice much difference. Put in a few more levels...
 

Gremlin

Hi, I'm Gmegbln
10 Year Member
Joined
Apr 4, 2010
Posts
669
Yes, it starts introducing more colors earlier.

Pretty sure it's most noticeable on Round 8 but it's been awhile
 
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BBH

1cc my ASS!,
20 Year Member
Joined
Jun 12, 2001
Posts
4,458
Yes, it starts introducing more colors earlier.

Pretty sure it's most noticeable on Round 8 but it's been awhile

This isn't true, Round 8 always has a variety of colors. Difficulty doesn't affect how many color types are on each stage, the patterns are static.

What the difficulty level affects in this game is how many shots you're given before the screen scrolls downward. You can test this easily on Round 1:

Level-1 = 8 shots before the screen falls on Round 1
Level-4 = 7 shots before the screen falls on Round 1 (default on Euro & Japanese bios)
Level-6 = 6 shots before the screen falls on Round 1 (default on US bios)
Level-8 = 5 shots before the screen falls on Round 1

The base value of how many shots you're given before the screen moves is based on how many total colored bubbles are left on the screen. Round 1 has 4 different colors, so the base value is 4. If you completely eliminate one of the colors, the value goes down accordingly. So if there's 3 colors on the screen, subtract 1 from each number here (it takes 6 shots before the screen scrolls on Level-4, etc).

Note that I only tested Levels 1, 4, 6, and 8. I do not know if there's anything different on 2, 3, 5, and 7, maybe further changes are made based on certain combinations of how many colors are left.
 
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