Proto:Bust-A-Move 4 (PlayStation)

This page details one or more prototype versions of Bust-A-Move 4 (PlayStation).

To do: There are likely inaccessible code leftovers to investigate. The leftovers of VS CPU mode are particularly suspicious. Someone with a better understanding of debugging PSX games should look into this.

...But what does it mean? This game has text or audio that needs to be translated. If you are fluent with this language, please read our translation guidelines and then submit a translation!

A stripped down demo of the Japanese version of Puzzle Bobble 4 can found on プレプレ (PurePure) Vol 12. a Japanese demo disk by Sony.

The main executable PB4.EXE has a date of 8 March 1998, compared to the final game's date of 27 May 1998.

General Differences

• The game resembles the arcade version a lot more as most of the port-specific changes haven't been made yet. More in detail in the following sections.
• The screen resolution is 320x232 in the prototype, which was reduced to 319x228 in the final game.

Proto	Final

• The loading screen is much simpler in the prototype and reuses the generic 8x16 font. It looks similar to the loading screens from the previous games.

Proto	Final

• To make room for the new loading screen text, the (unused) lowercase English font and most of the (still unused) "box characters" (?) were removed in the final game.

Proto	Final

• On the other hand, the 8x16/16x16 font is mostly identical between versions. The only change in the existing characters is the plus sign being replaced with two hyphens. Note that the addition of the new loading screen also added a few more characters to the font.

Proto	Final

• The prototype keeps eight background tiles loaded in VRAM all the time. In the final game, one of these was overwritten with the one used in the Edit Mode ending when not all 25 levels are defined. Not really a loss considering it looked almost identical to another tile. Note that the true palette for the overwritten tile wasn't found in the prototype.
• Additionally, the final game adds four more tiles, to add up to a total of 12.

Demo Lockouts

• Directional controls are locked in the main menu. There wouldn't have been much point in keeping them enabled either, because most of the game modes were removed from the demo and eventually softlock to a black screen if accessed.
• Only the first five levels of Arcade Puzzle mode can be played. A game over screen is shown afterwards.

Proto	Final

• The level select screen reflects this by only marking the 'A' and 'B' level paths, even though the graphics for the other letters exist.
• Bub is the only playable character, as directional controls are locked in the character select screen.
• To go with it, only Bub's sound effects exist. Additionally, unlike the final game, sound effects are stored in separate files for each character.

In-game	Full picture

• After the Game Over screen, an advertisement is shown featuring an unique background picture not seen elsewhere. The picture itself is cut off 8 pixels vertically in-game, for whatever it's worth.

Intro & Title Screen

• This is the first screen which loads when starting the demo, even before the Taito logo.
• There are no title screen demos. The game simply returns to the Taito logo.
• Advancing to the main menu can only be done by pressing Start. In the final game, Circle works as well.

Proto	Final

• Rather than blinking the PUSH START BUTTON text, in the demo it alternates between PUSH START and GAME OVER, not too dissimilar to how the Arcade version handles it.

Menus

General Changes

• In the final game, selecting an option is done through Circle, while X cancels and the other two buttons do nothing. This is consistent across the main menu, difficulty select and character select screens.
  It isn't the case in the prototype:
  • In the main menu, X and Circle select an option, while Square and Triangle cancel.
  • In the difficulty select screen, Triangle and Circle select an option, Square returns to the main menu, and X does nothing.
  • In the character select screen, X and Circle select an option, while Square returns to the difficulty select screen and Triangle does nothing.

Main Menu

• There is no music track assigned to this screen.

Proto	Final

• Menu options aren't highlighted with a different color palette unless they are selected, in which case they still flash multiple colors as they do in the final version.
• When returning from a submenu, the cursor always moves to the first option in the main menu. Thankfully fixed in the final game.

	Proto	Final
Puzzle Mode
VS CPU Mode

• The main menu is missing options to view the demo instructions in both Puzzle and VS CPU mode. The respective menu text graphics are missing too.
• Because cursor movement is disabled in the menus, the VS CPU and the Edit mode submenu are inaccessible in the demo. The latter is identical to the final game.
• In the final game, attempting to play custom levels when none are defined will show a message instead. The prototype has no such check and can access Edit Play mode right away... which, due to a lack of files, softlocks to a black screen.

Difficulty Select

• Like the arcade game, the difficulty select has assigned the same track which would be eventually used for the main menu.

Character Select

Proto	Final

• This is the only character select screen normally shown in the demo.
• All of the unlockable characters appear as black silhouettes in the character select screen, while the others use a faded out palette. All of the characters are actually already unlocked: this is just a palette effect paired up with the directional keys being disabled.
• The background on Bramb's icon was brightened up, to be in line with most other icons.

Player 1	Player 2

• The silhouette effect only extends to Player 1's side. This would have been noticeable if it weren't for directonal controls being disabled.

	Proto	Final
Initial select
VS CPU
2P VS

• The other types of character select screens exist as well, just unused.

Proto	Final

• The full cast VS CPU screen does not display the bubble patterns for the unlockable characters correctly.

Proto	Final

• Madame Luna's icon was horizontally flipped for whatever reason.

Proto	Final

• While Maita's icon looks the same between versions, in the actual graphic data, the border was recolored. This is only somewhat noticeable with P2's palette, which is never even used to display them anyway.

Proto	Final

• All of Woolen's portraits were redrawn.

Proto	Final

• The icon for actual locked characters in the demo, which is unused, is a completely empty square. The palette used for it doesn't seem to exist in the prototype.

Proto	Final

• The 2P VS portraits are styled after the arcade game, featuring baked-in solid color backgrounds that are inconsistent across characters. The final game opted for some consistency by turning all backgrounds transparent and setting them against a blue backdrop graphic.
  However, several spots in the portraits were missed and still keep the original colors in the final game, most noticeable in TamTam's portrait.
• The graphics related to the Win Contest character screen (e.g. VS text and background) are missing.
• Like the arcade version, the character select has assigned the same track as the stage select.

Stage Select

• No flashing WAIT A MOMENT message is shown near the top of the screen.
• Even though there is a five round restriction, not only the entirety of Easy, Normal and Hard modes exist, but so do the respective Special levels. These are normally unreachable, as the code to activate them does nothing in the demo.
  Set address 0C2294 to 03, 04 or 05 in the map screen to play one of the three special level sets.

• Doing so causes the stage select screen to be filled with animated stars, an effect which also remains unused in the final game.

Gameplay

General Changes

• Every stage uses the same background. Unlike the final version or even the arcade game, the layer of clouds doesn't scroll.
• There is no delay between the round being cleared and round clear text / jingle appearing. This cuts early a few of the win animations, though normally this can't be seen in the demo as Bub's animation is short enough to not be affected by this. However, the voice clips can be heard overlapping with the round clear jingle.
• Pressing Fire to start a round early also fires the bubble at the same time. In the final game, it requires pressing the button twice.

Proto	Final

• A couple of text-related differences:
  • No flashing WAIT A MOMENT or START BUTTON TO START is present on the opposite player's side.
  • The round text is missing a dash, like the arcade game.

Proto	Final

• Hitting a star bubble makes it disappear immediately, rather than after the animation ends.
• The text for player 2's score is positioned further to the right in the demo.
• The pause text simply says PAUSE rather than PLAYER<n> PAUSE.
• The pause menu (accessible by pressing Select after pausing the game) doesn't exist.

Music

• The track for both round themes loop earlier, cutting out the last segment of the songs.
• Unpausing restarts the music.

Bugs & Oddities

• The color randomizer is buggy in the prototype. In certain circumstances it has a tendency to give priority to a few colors (e.g. Blue or Green), repeating them over and over. This makes a few rounds like H-4 very hard if not outright impossible to beat.
• It's possible to move the pointer towards the center twice as fast by holding Up and the horizontal direction towards the middle at the same time.
• The up arrow block's morph animation sometimes fails to play and the block abruptly changes.

• Pausing the game sometimes not only fails to stop the palette animation, but plays it at double speed.

VS CPU Mode Leftovers

Setting 0C2245 to 01 partially enables leftovers of the VS CPU mode. Note that the game may be unstable and eventually freeze if done in the middle of a level.

• This changes the screen layout to the otherwise unused VS one, and tries to use bubble generator for the bubble layout.
• The pointer machinery and characters are positioned incorrectly and either fail to animate or do so at double speed.
• Due to bad priority, the bubbles are hidden behind the background.
• Chain reactions don't seem to be implemented yet.

• If the address is set back to 00, the randomized bubble layout can be seen.

Characters

General Changes

• The loss animation starts playing only after the continue screen shows up.
• A few of the loss / continue pictures or animations loop incorrectly.
• None of the characters except for Bub have sound effects, but continuing does play Bub's continue SFX, regardless of whoever you're playing as.
• Even though the "Panic" and "Near-Win" animations exist, they never play. For obvious reasons, VS CPU-specific animations don't play either.
• The idle animations tend to be simpler and use fewer frames, even when compared to the arcade game. Unless otherwise noted, the extra graphics and the animation itself do exist - it's just the game never calling them.

Main Characters

Bub & Bob

Proto	Final

• No looking up in the idle animation. This will be a reoccurring theme among most of the characters, so get ready for it.
• Bub's sound effects are exactly the same as the arcade game.
• Bob uses the same sound effects as Bub.

Alkanet

Proto	Final

• The palettes from the arcade game are still being used. They were updated to have softer shading for the skin color consistent across both 1P and 2P.

	Proto	Final
1P
2P

• How the palettes look when applied to the character.

Proto	Final

• Missing the looking up part of the idle animation.

Proto	Final

• Alkanet's mouth and the snowman were redrawn from their iterations in the arcade game, with the latter becoming slightly larger.

Proto	Final

• A nitpicky change, but one extra pixel was added for the shading to the lower right side of the snowman. The other frame for the snowman is identical to the final game.

Proto	Final

• The curls were redrawn in both the win and loss pics.
• In the prototype, the facial expression for the continue frame contains the curls baked in.

Marino

Proto	Final

• The idle animation is incomplete in the prototype.

Kurol

Proto	Final

• Broken idle animation loop. The second/looking up part of the animation does not exist either, even if setting the animation ID manually, but the graphics for it are present.

TamTam

Proto	Final

• As usual, no looking up in the idle animation.

Proto	Final

• The loss pic does not fade to gray.

Cleon

Proto	Final

• Missing the second part of the idle animation.

Proto	Final

• Cleon's arm in the win pic was made a little bit thicker.

G

Proto	Final

• Looking up? In the idle animation? Surely you jest.
• The loss pic has a buggy loop between the first and last frame, which was removed in the final game.

Bramb

Proto	Final

• Well...

Develon

Proto	Final

• Like the arcade game, Develon blinks much more often in the prototype. Unlike the arcade game, however, he lacks something else.

Proto	Final

• Part of the fire effect was erased in one of the frames for some reason.
• For a change, the combo picture erroneously does not loop and as such it disappears almost immediately.

Gigant

Proto	Final

• Evidently, it used to be hard for a robotic knight to look up. Fortunately, he seemingly acquired some oil by the final game.

Proto	Final

• Gigant's legs were touched up in a few frames. However, in the final game, what's used in the stage select keeps the older design.

Proto	Final

• The win pic is reused from the arcade version.

Proto	Final

• The loss pic is a broken version of the one from the arcade game (which lacked electricity effects), as the smoke is positioned incorrectly for one frame, revealing a transparent cutout where it was meant to go. Rather than fixing the smoke's position... the final game opted to fill said cutout instead.

Proto	Final

• In the continue pic, Gigant's red eyes were made shinier and fire was added.

Bosses

These characters existed in the arcade game, but were CPU-only characters. They received a few extra graphics when they became playable in the home versions.

Madame Luna

Proto	Final

• It's tough.
• Drunk always appears during the loss animation as if it were VS CPU Story mode. This animation also loops, which is completely wrong.

Drunk

• Drunk himself also works by VS CPU Story mode rules, where he lacks an intro animation -- he just appears.

Proto	Final

• You can guess by now what's missing in this idle animation.
• The combo animation has a tendency to glitch out and loop endlessly between two frames, overriding almost every other animation.

Proto	Final

• The loss pic is from the arcade game, though it erroneously loops.

Proto	Final

• On the other hand, this goofy continue picture is new. Drunk didn't have a continue pic in the arcade game, owing to his status as a boss character.

Unlockable Characters

The guest characters from Puzzle Bobble 2 are completely new to the home versions, and as such received more changes than others.
In general, these earlier iterations are more in line to how they appeared in that game.

Monsta

Proto	Final

• The idle animation is missing the looking up and sleeping parts. The graphics for the latter are missing.

Proto	Final

• Originally looked like the animation from Puzzle Bobble 2. In the final game, a glow effect and fire was added as separate sprites overlaid on top of the original one. The animation itself was also lengthened, slowed down, and added an extra frame for a better transition to the idle animation. None of these extra graphics exist in the prototype.
• The loss picture accidentally loops.

Maita

Proto	Final

• Maita only rotates his head during the idle animation. The other graphics exist because they are used in the "attacked" animation, but the secondary idle animation itself doesn't exist at all.

Proto	Final

• The rock is missing the dust effect, as in Puzzle Bobble 2. The graphics for them aren't in the game either.

Proto	Final

• This extends to the combo picture.

Proto (In-game)	Proto (Full)	Final

• Like in Puzzle Bobble 2, Maita created three copies of himself and performed small jumps twice afterwards. This was shortened to two copies and a single jump due to the original animation being always cut short -- there's not enough time after the level ends to play it in full.

Packy

Proto	Final

• Player 2's palette received a fresh coat of pink paint.

Proto	Final

• Usual idle animation differences right here.

Proto	Final

• The combo animation does not have electric sparks, as in Puzzle Bobble 2. The graphics for them don't exist either.

Proto	Final

• The combo pic is very much incomplete in the prototype. This is most noticeable with Packy's head, which is less round and lacks much shading in the prototype.

Proto	Final

• The win pic is completely different between versions.

Proto	Final

• In the loss and continue pictures, the paw was redrawn to not look off. To compensate, it gained three flickering pixels.

Proto	Final

• The stage select frame in the prototype is a leftover from an earlier version of the graphics. Packy has shinier eyes and the shading on the lower part of the body is a little bit different.
  This frame also seems to have been copied over existing graphics.

Woolen

Woolen received the most changes and improvements out of all of the unlockable characters. Originally, she was directly based off her appearance in Puzzle Bobble 2, but looked... a bit off.
The final game opted to redraw almost every sprite of her, each receing at least one of these changes:

• Smaller and rounder eyes. At times they are just too big in the prototype!
• A redrawn bell with improved shading which usually does not change shape, border color or size between frames.
• Consistently smaller arms and legs, with squared off hooves. In the prototype, the arm sizes are all over the place.
• A less blocky body shape.

Proto	Final

• The intro animation is mostly the same, common changes aside.

Proto	Final

• The main idle animation was made faster and, more importantly, less... odd looking. The first frame, reused between animations, also features a different facial expression, more in line with her Puzzle Bobble 2 iteration.

Proto	Final

• The secondary idle animation, which is unused in the prototype. Alongside the usual changes, Woolen does not reach as high in the final game.

Proto	Final

• The smaller legs are pretty noticeable, as it is the consistent position of the bell compared to the prototype. As for the animation itself, it was made faster to look less choppy and added three repeated frames at the beginning.

Proto	Final

• In the attacked animation, the prototype reuses some frames from the loss animation. For more bell-related details, this animation contains frames which weren't updated, and as such they still use the old bell graphics.

Proto	Final

• In one of the frames in the prototype, Woolen is keeping her arms close together. The frame where she holds her arms high is also still using the older hooves' design in the final game.

Proto	Final

• The bell issues continue here as they change size and border color between frames. The shading on the lower part of the body when landing was also made much darker.

Proto	Final

• In the combo pic, both arms were changed: the right arm's is in a different position, while the left arm was touched up a bit.

Proto	Final

• Both win pics have a similar pose, but that's about it. It was completely redrawn. Note that in-game, the first frame only shows once since the animation loops to the second frame.

Proto	Final

• The right arm was shortened, but, for some reason, most of the cloud animation was removed as only the top right corner is still animated in the final game.

Proto	Final

• Unlike every other continue pic, this one has two frames of animation in the prototype. However, it's bugged and erroneously loops. The final game updated both frames... but only the second one ended up being used!
• Woolen's sprite in the stage select is accidentally cut off at the last line.

Miscellaneous

• The intro for the VS CPU Story mode still lingers here, unused but identical to the one from the final game. The font from the Arcade version was already updated to something more legible, and it includes the extra scene with Madame Luna and Cleon.

• "EXIT"... in English characters, in the style of the otherwise Japanese main menu font. This is also unused in the final game.

Unused Text

SsUtKeyOnV error! nowvoice = %d :sc = %d 
mode set error
search error
loc set error %x
read error

Debug text not included alongside the debug strings of the standard library.

POSITION CONTROL
JL:
PTS:
SEC:

Miscellaneous unused text.