Hey Arcaders!
Here we are- at the end of our deep dive into Data East’s history (for now…) with one of my favorites- Tumblepop!
Alien Chasing, Mutant-Busting!
Clean up with Tumble Pop, a maze/puzzle game littered with aliens, mutants and goons, oh my!
In the future, the world is infested with strange beasties and weird mutations. So grab your trusty Vaculator, suck up those critters, and make the world fit for humans again!
Tumblepop is a platform game reminiscent of Bubble Bobble, Pang and Snow Bros., where players assume the role of vacumupits through ten levels consisting of ten stages set in different parts of the world (Moscow, Egypt, Paris, New York City, Rio de Janeiro, Antarctica, Australia, Japan, Space and Moon), each with a boss at the every tenth stage that must be fought before progressing any further, in an effort to defeat monsters, ghosts, aliens and other oddball characters as the main objective. Each player can suck enemies into a vacuum-cleaner-like devices, however enemies will escape from the player’s vacuum-cleaner and kill their character if they are kept for too long. Once an enemy has been captured into the vacuum-cleaner, players can spit them back as rolling balls, which will rebound off of walls until eventually shattering against a wall.
Any enemies the tumbling ball rolls into are eliminated and reveal hidden bonus items that are crucial for reaching high-scores such as collectable letters of the alphabet found in randomly appearing bubbles to gradually spell the word “TUMBLEPOP”, the progress of which is permanently displayed at the bottom of the screen. The word goes back to default after completion. When completed, players are transported to a bonus level which gives them the opportunity to obtain higher scores and an extra life, although this level is strictly timed. If the player takes too much time to complete a level, a vampire-like beast will come and try to kill the players, which is invincible and this also counts during boss encounters.
When players bowl an enemy over, it may drop other items like gems, money or power-ups. Players can also stun enemies with the beam emitted from the vacuum-cleaner.
It was released as a conversion kit here in the US.
Lets look at some gameplay!
Sadly- the arcade game only had one release- and it was on the totally awesome Arcade Legends machine- the same one with Super Burgertime at DisneyQuest!
So gang, emulation is your friend with this great game!
They only released it on the original Gameboy- given the limitations of the system, they remade it into an open world adventure. You can also link up two Gameboys for multiplayer! The whole “world tour” idea had to be dropped and the levels became set in generic places such as a castle, a circus and a pirate ship; however, they look all identical and bland when traversed. The sprites, on the other hand, are remarkably faithful to the originals, especially the big bosses, save for the Egyptian genie that has been replaced by some demon/ghost thing; the final boss, the mad scientist on a mecha, has been substituted as well with a far more interesting six-armed cyclops thing, being controlled by some dark specter that is the true final fight. This time the world map is not just for choosing the starting level, but is a playable hub and, after having entered a level, another map opens up showing the road to the boss’ lair, a little like Super Mario Bros. 3‘s world maps. As a nod to the skipped stages of the original, it’s not mandatory to complete all these stages to fight the boss.
I hope that good old Johnny Turbo releases this amazing arcade game to the Switch someday!
Out of all the multi-platform defeat all the monster games- this one is my favorite! The vacuum and release mechanic makes it feel like you have more control! It’s like Luigi’s Mansion, 10 years before Luigi’s Mansion! Someone had said in a review of Tumblepop ” It’s the Ghostbusters game we never got!” I absolutely agree.
Man- I can’t believe we have reached the and of this journey- We missed quite a few games, including the Data East pinball era. We will go through them in separate articles very soon! Thanks for taking the journey with me!
Keep Playin’ Like It’s 1981!
The Arcade Archives! 