Bub And Bob

Bub and Bob is a Macintosh clone of Taito's 1986 arcade classic Bubble Bobble, written by Sebastian Wegner (McSebi@aol.com) and first released in 1997. It was distributed as shareware through Info-Mac and Macintosh Garden, eventually growing into a small franchise with a Carbonized sequel and Mac OS X ports.

The pitch

Per the Japanese 1.7.3 release notes on Info-Mac, the game is "a 90% clone of the classic" - players control a green or blue bubble-blowing dinosaur who must trap enemies in bubbles, pop them, and work through 99 levels to reach the boss "deadly balls" stage at level 100. Two-player simultaneous play is supported throughout.

Versions in the wild

The Info-Mac archive carries three branches: the original BubAndBob 1.0 (1997, 68040 minimum, 4.2 MB RAM), the Japanese 1.7.3J localization, and Bub & Bob 2 v0.97. According to Macintosh Garden, the line continued as Bub & Bob X for OS X 10.3-10.5 and a 1.2 build for OS X 10.6+.

Bub & Bob 2

The sequel rewrites the engine as a Carbon application and ships 100 original levels, nine enemy types, and a level editor (OS X only). Its BinHex header brags about "high quality 32-bit graphics, 27 wacky stereo sound effects and 11 charming music themes," plus an online top-100 score table.

Engine and pedigree

Macintosh Garden credits the original game to Sebastian Wegner with publisher Mcsebi, built on Tony Myles' Sprite Animation Toolkit. The final level is widely described as "near-impossible," and Bub & Bob 2 has known fullscreen display issues under Mac OS 9.2.2 - run it windowed or under Mac OS X.