Unique Games: Bubble Ghost

There are plenty of great games on the Game Boy. Zelda Link's Awaking, Donkey Kong, Tetris, Dr. Mario. The list goes on and on, but there's one little incredibly underrated game that hardly anyone has heard of. And that's Bubble Ghost!

Bubble Ghost is a maze game, but unlike most maze games where you're confined to the walls of a maze or labyrinth. In Bubble Ghost, you play as a ghost who can actually go through walls, however there's a bubble floating about, and the little ghost wants to leave this old house with his bubble in tact. Issue is, there's plenty of stuff there to burst your precious little bubble.

Be it spikes, flames, hard dryers, or even the heat emitted from candles can burst your little bubble. The idea is simple. You move from room to room, blowing your bubble away from any objects until you get to the final room whereby you can escape from the house with your bubble. The game has a total of 35 levels, and the GameBoy version has a great sound track. I had this game for quite some time and never thought about the game's roots. I always thought that as it was released by Pony Canyon, a Japanese Software and media company, I thought it came from the east. But I was amazed to find out that it was originally developed closer to home...

Surprisingly, it was originally released on the Commodore 64 in France and later ported to the Atari ST and DOS in the US and Canada. What's more interesting about this version is the fact that the ghost sprite looks different. Clearly the GameBoy version, had it's design of the sprite not just so it would appeal to the Japanese audience, but so that it could fit on the GameBoy screens lower screen resolution so that it wouldn't be too big on-screen.

The PC-DOS version of the game is now abandon-ware. Meaning that you can download the game without the fear of being accused of pirating. As Christophe Andrcani, the designer and programmer of the original game, doesn't own the rights to it any more. Nor do Accolade, they went bust in 1999, and didn't take the publishing rights of the game either.

Not only is the PC-DOS game abandon-ware, but there's a remake of the GameBoy version done by Vision Software and Brothers Soft. You can download this right here.

Before I go though, here's the music to the GameBoy game that brings back some good memories of gaming's past!