The legendary Bubble Bobble series returns to the States in the form of Bust-A-Move once again, having appeared on numerous consoles and arcade machines across the country for many years now. Making the series debut on the Wii, Bust-A-Move Bash! is a shoe-in for the console, thanks to the unique controls making aiming easier than ever - or that's what the developers had in mind at least. But while BAM Bash is a fun game for fans of the series and indeed puzzle games in general, it definitely has some faults and shortcomings that hinder it from achieving puzzle greatness.

If you've never picked up Bust-A-Move before, it's a fairly straightforward puzzler. The gameplay takes place in a vertical rectangle, much like Tetris and dozens of other puzzle games. You select a character - which one really makes no difference - and control a small cannon at the bottom of the screen, which you move around to alter its aiming angle and then fire colored bubbles upwards at the pattern of bubbles above you. Connecting three or more causes them to clear, plus anything that was connected only to the burst cluster also falls away. Strategy comes into play when you learn how to rebound bubbles against walls and the top of the field to reach otherwise bubbles that are otherwise blocked from your line of sight, or just to clear off some top pieces first and hope to break some other bubbles loose.

The main puzzle mode of the game offers a good 500 stages to play through, the first couple of hundred of which are a bit too easy for those who know what they're doing. The levels do try to mix up the backgrounds and bubble layouts to keep things interesting though, and overall BAM Bash is a fun puzzle experience that's worth playing through. The only other single player offerings are the Endless and Shooter modes, the first of which is the basic game in a neverending format, with the second being the bonus mode that's included in between certain main levels. Using the Wii-mote like a gun, you shoot floating bubbles of specific colors as they fly by on the screen; when different colors show up, you have to quickly switch your gun's mode to that color in order to hit and destroy them. While this makes a nice break during the main puzzles, as a standalone mini-game it gets dull quickly.

Power-ups play a big part of the game as well, acting as different types of ammo for your cannon. Bowling ball shaped bubbles will break through a large clump of bubbles, while star bubbles get rid of every bubble of one color on the screen. As with a lot of puzzle games, it's hard to improve on a solid concept and there isn't a lot Bust-A-Move could do to the concept to mess it up... except the controls.

BAM Bash makes use of the Wii-mote as you would expect, with some great ideas alongside some truly poor ones. The default scheme allows you to point at the screen and move from side to side to move your cannon left and right. This is great, except the sensitivity can't be adjusted and it can prove a bit jerky. The second setup has you holding the Wii-mote like a joystick, moving it left and right by tilting your wrist, a truly tiring method that is not recommended. Finally, you can hook up the classic controller and enjoy Bust-A-Move Bash old-school style - and by that we mean very old-school, because there is no joystick support, just the d-pad! Considering the new controls are the biggest draw of the game, it's a shame that you can't adjust the sensitivity to your liking. Mucking around with the controls in the Wii system option might help, but it's a pain and really isn't something that developers should expect players to do.

Moving on, the graphics of the game are shockingly underdeveloped, leaving the title looking just like the Dreamcast version from years ago (how many now, seven?), which is not a good thing. The backgrounds have some movement and vary in design, but there's nothing truly exciting to look at, and when puzzle games like Lumines are taking the market by storm on the PSP, why is a next generation puzzle game on the Wii left looking like a throwback to a bygone era? The orbs are shiny and colorful, but lack any sparkle or extra flare that can be found in Xbox Live Arcade games like Hexic HD. The sound doesn't factor into the game much either, leaving us neither annoyed nor impressed by the overall selection of tunes and effects.

Another huge draw of Bust-A-Move is always the competitive versus mode, and the Wii ups the stakes by allowing - for the first time - eight-player gameplay on one console. This is achieved by splitting up the Wii-motes, nunchuks and classic controllers between players, each of which can act as a separate input. It sounds fine, but when you get into the game, you will notice something horribly, horribly wrong: there are no separate windows for each player. That's right, in this version it's a just one hugely massive field of bubbles with eight (or however many people are playing) cannons below all firing upwards! It's so hectic, with visuals for each player's aim line, bubbles popping and power-ups floating around that any strategy is impossible. By the time you look at your color, then look at the field, other bubbles have already covered it up. We've simply mashed the fire button randomly and come out the victor by blind luck - that's not how it should be, and BAM fans picking this up for the multiplayer aspect are going to be pretty unhappy.

Bust-A-Move has achieved cult status for its past arcade and console appearances, particularly on Dreamcast and PlayStation. However, with the jump to next generation it fails to capture the multiplayer magic at all, leaving the game looking and sounding just as it did years ago. The main puzzle mode offers a nice selection of levels, though it will take a long time for it to become difficult in any shape or form, so hardcore fans will be a bit bored for a good portion of the game. The controls work, but should have worked a lot better and offered more customization, considering they are the main selling point - pick up Bust-A-Move Bash! if you're looking for a good puzzle game for your Wii, but long time fans of Bust-A-Move might want to rent it and just blitz through the main stages before heading back to their Dreamcast copy instead.

Reviewed by Christopher Martin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).