- Year: 1999
- Platform: Windows
- Publisher: Agetec Europe, Ltd.
- Developer: Taito Corporation
- Theme: Anime / Manga
The games industry is nothing if predictable – at any one time you can guarantee that at least six different development teams are working hard on taking an original and popular game of their own design and seeing just how they can milk it for another five or six sequels. Sequels, that is, which will inevitably turn out to be no better or perhaps worse than the original. Take Tetris, for example – it has spawned bucketloads of unofficial clones and been subject to a variety of semi-official follow-ups, most recently a title called The Next Tetris. The trouble is that one of the key reasons the original Tetris was so good is that is was essentially a simplistic game – you just had to place coloured blocks on top of each other, trying to make solid lines. Adding ‘extra features’ to the game just served to over-complicate things and make the game less fun to play. But just what does this have to do with Bust a Move 4, the third sequel to the original and highly entertaining bubble bursting game Bust a Move, also known as Puzzle Bobble? Quite a bit as it happens, because Taito, the makers of this title, converted from its arcade format by Agetec have, like the makers of The Next Tetris actually managed to dilute the solid gameplay of the original by adding a bunch of unnecessary extra features. It’s not quite as bad a case of sequelitis as the whole Tetris thing, but it just goes to prove that there’s no place for original thought in the games industry.