Puzzle Bobble VS

Official Nokia packshot (Europe)

Taito's competitive bubble-shooting arcade series arrives on the N-Gage as one of its seven launch titles in October 2003, pitting players against each other across opposite halves of the screen — firing coloured bubbles upward to match and clear clusters while sending garbage bubbles to disrupt the opponent's side.

The N-Gage version takes an unusual structural approach: unlike every other main-series Puzzle Bobble release up to that point, it omits solo puzzle stages entirely and is built solely around the head-to-head competitive format — hence the 'VS' suffix. It supports up to four players via Bluetooth and includes an 'Avec' (couch co-op) mode allowing two people to share a single game deck. Despite being based on a format that originated with Taito's beloved 1994 arcade game, the N-Gage port received poor reviews: critics cited sluggish cursor movement, difficulty distinguishing dark bubble colours on the device's screen, and a thin overall package. All About N-Gage described it as possibly the worst MMC game on the platform.