Bub and Bob - in dinosaur form, shooting bubbles from a Steampunk cannon - have appeared on just about every format available since the mid-nineties; a spin-off from Taito’s (also hugely popular) Bubble Bobble. It comes as no surprise, then, that these cute little mites have shown up early on the PSP, ready to win you over with their loveable little buck-toothed grins and compulsive gameplay.

Imagine throwing a hand grenade into the props department for the CBeebies channel, and the resulting mess of colour is what you are presented with at Puzzle Bobble Pocket (PBP)’s front end, with a garish rainbow of a selection wheel (daubed in screamingly-bright primary colours) allowing you to navigate around the gameplay options. For those not in the know, Puzzle Bobble is a puzzle game (yes, really!) which can almost be described as Tetris-in-reverse. Instead of geometric shapes dropping down the screen towards you, which must be matched in order that they disappear, PB is pro-active – you fire a bubble, from a cannon, up-screen. A set of bubbles await, of various colours, and the launched bubble sticks to the pile. The idea is to match a set of three (or more) similarly coloured bubbles, whereupon they pop and disappear. The pile increases and ekes its way down the screen as a timer counts down to oblivion, so your Jurassic chum must clear the bubbles as swiftly and efficiently as possible. Like all good puzzle games, the premise is very simple, but the time-squeezed gameplay brings out two strong states of mind in the gamer: panic and addiction, both hallmarks of quality puzzlers.

The reason PB is so successful is down to its particular spin on the block-dropping formula. Being able to select your shot and control bubble popability makes the game more aggressive than defensive (unlike most titles in the genre), and is reminiscent of Pang and even Missile Defence more than, say, Tetris (or its recent progeny, Lumines). Only the gaudy, cartoon-like characters and the squeaky, toddler-mesmerising audio effects make it appear more simplistic and shallow than it really is.

PBP has several play modes. In Vs mode, you challenge various combatants such as Zebedee-like Banebow, or the ghostly Maiten. Bubble combinations completed and removed from the player’s area are squished onto the CPU’s screen, along with some other artefacts like indestructible blocks (which the player must clear by removing the bubbles supporting them) or rainbow-filled orbs that mimic the colour of any bubble shot at it. Beat the challenger by filling their section with as much detritus as you can pile across. Also available are a Survival mode, where you compete against the CPU (the differences between this and ‘Vs.’ mode are negligible) and Endless mode, where you remain on one screen, battling the party decorations for as long as humanly – nay, dinosaurly - possible.

As long as the mechanics of PB are tight, and nothing Earth-shattering changes in the interface, there’s little to criticise Taito for other than hammock-swinging, grass-chewing laziness. Such a tried-and-tested formula is never going to be fiddled with too much in case series fans are alienated, and the balance destroyed but, even so, PBP is an almost comically dozy release, by any conceivable standard. Not only are there no exciting or varied additions to the explosive antics, nothing has been done to get the most out of the PSP’s display. There’s no TATE mode option (i.e. displaying the game vertically rather than horizontally), meaning the playable area fills only a small portion of the screen, and the remaining space is filled with character art and score information, which is a waste.

The visuals are too loud and distracting, as well. Side panels (which display the characters and their scores, as is traditional in PB games), are drawn as a cross between 1960’s psychedelia and the Italian ‘Memphis’ design style (which older gamers and retro collectors will recognise as gracing the cover of Activision’s releases for the Atari VCS) – a little over the top. Ironically, the play area is sparse in comparison to this graphical mess. Gone are the hand-drawn background scenery, replaced by a pinstriped green backdrop that’s boring in the extreme, and the usual Puzzle Bobble polish and charm is definitely absent. Amazingly, this version has no two-player mode, either – an omission that’s barely credible.

The gameplay mechanics are spot-on, though, and all the old tricks – such as bouncing bubbles into tight spots, using precision and a trained eye – come off immaculately. The ‘POP!’ visual effect when a set of bubbles burst is nicely done, too, and the progressive, mission-based Single mode is as moreish as ever. The UMD drive is barely accessed, meaning battery life is long in comparison to some Playstation Portable releases – a bonus PSP owners will be pleased to hear of. What shouldn’t be forgotten, either, is that women adore Puzzle Bobble. The series’ success with female gamers is nothing short of phenomenal, and this game gives the handheld some much needed cross-gender appeal.

Although PBP sports no new additives or flavourings, it rehashes the old ingredients successfully enough, for the most part. Taito have wasted an opportunity to impress punters with their verve and creativity on new hardware, though, and anyone familiar with the series will have seen it all before. The lack of two player mode would be funny if it wasn’t so incredibly dumb; its omission almost seems like some bizarre joke.