[Long read] Why the PlayStation 4 needs Puzzle Bobble

The year is 1997. An eleven year old kid walks into his local movie rental store. He is nervous. His right hand keeps hovering near his jacket’s breast pocket. There’s a lot of money in that pocket. It’s not just in the breast pocket, of course. The money’s in the wallet in his pocket. Eleven thousand Belgian francs to be exact, about two hundred and seventy-five Euros.

The kid did not steal the money from the movie rental place. How could he? He just entered it. No, he earned that money. How did he earn it? By being a kid, of course, and saving up his weekly allowance of a hundred francs (two and a half Euros), the money he got as a birthday gift or as a gift for any other holiday, and the money he made from his shady money lending practice (which we will not discuss further!).

It took the kid a hefty amount of time to save that kind of money. And today. Today he was going to spend it. All of it. He was going to buy a Sony PlayStation. It was not going to be his first videogame console. He already owned a Nintendo Game Boy and a Sega Mega Drive. But those two he had gotten from his relatives, and hadn’t been very expensive to begin with – the second hand Sega Mega Drive, for example, had only cost his mom 500 francs, or twelve and a half Euros, and had only been in his possession for a few months prior to his decision to buy a PlayStation. This new console, however, was going to be his and his alone, though he would allow his brother to play on it as well… for a price.

A console without games is just an ornament that attracts an insane amount of dust, but the kid didn’t have any money to buy an actual game to go with his console. That’s why he played the demo disk that came with the console over and over again. After months of extra saving he was able to buy his first game though. His game of choice: Bust-a-Move 2: Arcade Edition. It is also known as Puzzle Bobble 2, and is a spin-off from Bubble Bobble. Why did he buy that specific game, and not… oh… I don’t know… Tomb Raider, Crash Bandicoot or Resident Evil to name some of the lesser known titles released for Sony’s PlayStation by that time?

Because he had played Puzzle Bobble on an arcade at the local sports center and had loved it. He wanted to relive that experience. He wanted to shoot colored bubbles. Would he have loved to jump on boxes with some rabid bandicoot more than shooting colored bubbles? God, yes! Puzzle Bobble 2 on the PlayStation didn’t turn out to be as fun as his memory of Puzzle Bobble on the arcade had let him to believe it would be. But… there’s no way to argue with nostalgia.

Heck, the kid let nostalgia blind almost all of his later decisions to buy a game console, even though by that time he wasn’t a little kid anymore, and should have been more wise. He bought a Playstation 2 for Final Fantasy X because he had loved Final Fantasy VII, and was disappointed (though not by the console). He bought a Playstation 3 for Final Fantasy XIII because he had loved… Final Fantasy VII, and was disappointed (though not by the console). He bought a Nokia N-Gage for Sonic N, and was disappointed (yes, also by the console).

Nostalgia drives sales. That’s why I just bought an NTSC-GameCube for one game: Baten Kaitos: Origins, a game which was never released in Europe, though its predecessor Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean was. I had loved the original Baten Kaitos. I had loved it so much that I was willing to buy a console exclusively to be able to play its successor… Nine years after its initial release… But still…

I haven’t bought a PlayStation 4 yet. I know I will. I know I will let nostalgia blind me once more, and hopefully I will not be disappointed this time around (here’s looking at you Final Fantasy XV!). I’m waiting for that one game.

I’m waiting for my next (gen) Puzzle Bobble.