Game Discussion of the Week: Bust-A-Move 2/Puzzle Bobble 2

Nobody was available to do anything fun tonight so after having watched a movie, I decided to play some games, and I broke out the PS2 to maybe play some fun arcade games. I've recently bought (meaning this year's summer) Bust-A-Move 3 and 4 on the PS1 because back in the day, Bust-A-Move 2 was one of the childhood classics my dad and I used to play together. Actually, when I think about it, this was also one of the few games I played with my sister (she only played this, party games, Rayman and the occasional Battle Arena Toshinden), however, Bust-A-Move 2 was definitely the one she played the most, although only against her friends or me. My dad was all into the puzzle mode and pretty much played all of the different combinations you could do. Myself on the other hand, mostly stuck to beating the same two first bosses in the story mode, over and over again. The thing about the story mode is that the third boss is notoriously difficult to beat. It is a pink sheep character, and it fucks you over constantly. This wool-filled piece of fuck pressed my shit in a lot as a kid, and it was not until I was way older and went back to trying to beat it again (this was after the PS2 had been released).

Here's a picture of this childhood fucker:

Like I said, a friend of mine and I went back to the past to try to beat this game once and for all. We did that to a lot of childhood games such as Rayman, Crash Bandicoot 2, Tomb Raider 1-4 (failed at this one, however, I beat the first game without any walkthroughs or guides in 2018), Croc (failed at this time, although I 100% it in 2016) and Tai Fu: Wrath of the Tiger (got to the last boss). We were probably around 10-13 at the time when we went back to try these games again, and a lot of PS1 games are truly hard as fuck to beat. What makes this game so difficult to complete though, aside from just being difficult in gameplay, is that you only got 9 continues, and then the game is over and you have to start all over again. There are no checkpoints and no save feature. Once you lose your last life, then it's over and you're booted to the main title screen. Sorry fucker, but try again. There's something unique about these types of games' challenges because it's so demotivating having to start over again, especially since a single boss in this game can drain all of your continues in quick succession. Anyways, we made it past the pink sheep and then progressed pretty far, but I never got to the last boss sadly.

Now, more than a decade later I return to this game and think to myself, you know what, I'd get a lot of satisfaction if I finally beat this game. I warmed up playing the puzzle mode and beat it with some minor struggle, however, I beat it on my first run. Now for the story mode... This game is pretty easy? Maybe after all of these years playing other arcade games and puzzle games such as Tetris, maybe I've become great at these games? I made it all of the way to the last boss and I thought I beat him, but then it turns out he has basically a second life bar, and this is where the game goes from challenging to near impossible. I had like 2 or 3 continues, but it wasn't even a competition, he demolished me. Then I went for another run, and another run, and another run, only getting more and more frustrated because somehow it's totally random whether or not some of the bosses go all god mode on me. The two first bosses are always easy, they are no challenge. Then the pink sheep comes, and she's sometimes extremely challenging, but other times you can finish her pretty quickly. The Chinese Wall girl boss can also sometimes be a pain in the ass, even worse so than the pink sheep. And lastly the Witch and the Robot can turn god mode on you. Some runs I just start over, because I know I will need as many continues as possible to beat the final boss. Usually one of these bosses beats me some rounds before I get to the final boss, so at best I had 5 continues, but it doesn't matter when you get to this boss. He never ever makes a mistake, and once he gets one combo on you, you're fucked. It doesn't matter how great of a combo I do, he clears his board like it's nothing. I get into the zone like I don't actually have any sense of anything that goes on around me; it's just me and the game. I get frustrated as fuck, super demotivated when I lose my last continue and have to start all over again and none of my strategies seem to work. Towards the end of the night, I try one more run and in one of the rounds I got into a great combo where I dropped more than ten combos in a quick succession, and he didn't budge. I had a massive combo built up in one of the sides, but the game wouldn't give the one color I needed (I can swear that the game knew I needed that particular color and just cheated me out of it for the longest time), and when I finally got that color I won. This was one of the greatest gaming moments I've ever felt, got a huge rush of endorphins and everything.

So anyways, that's my story with Bust-A-Move 2, did any of you guys ever play this, and if so, did you ever beat the story mode?