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Bust-a-Move/Puzzle Bobble Is NP-complete

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Discrete and Computational Geometry and Graphs (JCDCGG 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 9943))

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Abstract

We prove that the classic 1994 Taito video game, known as Puzzle Bobble or Bust-a-Move, is NP-complete. Our proof applies to the perfect-information version where the bubble sequence is known in advance, and it uses just three bubble colors.

“A girl runs up with somethin’ to prove. So don’t just stand there. Bust a move!”

— Young MC [YDD89]

S. Langerman—Directeur de recherches du F.R.S.–FNRS.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Spoiler: if you finish Bubble Bobble in super mode in co-op, then the true ending reveals that Bub and Bob are in fact human boys, transformed into brontosauruses by the evil whale Baron Von Blubba [Hun11].

  2. 2.

    http://erikdemaine.org/bustamove/.

References

  1. Breukelaar, R., Demaine, E.D., Hohenberger, S., Jan Hoogeboom, H., Kosters, W.A., Liben-Nowell, D.: Tetris is hard, even to approximate. Int. J. Comput. Geom. Appl. 14(1–2), 41–68 (2004)

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  3. The international arcade museum: bubble bobble. http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=7222

  4. The international arcade museum: puzzle bobble. http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=9169

  5. Viglietta, G.: Gaming is a hard job, but someone has to do it! In: Proceedings of the 6th International conference on Fun with Algorithms, pp. 357–367 (2012)

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  6. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: puzzle bobble. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puzzle_Bobble

  7. Young, M.C., Dike, M., Doss, M.: Bust a move. In: Proceedings of Stone Cold Rhymin’. Delicious Vinyl (1989)

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Acknowledgments

We thank Giovanni Viglietta for helpful discussions, in particular for pointing out bugs in earlier versions of this proof.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, 32 Vassar St., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02139, USA

    Erik D. Demaine

  2. Départment d’Informatique, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

    Stefan Langerman

Authors
  1. Erik D. Demaine
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  2. Stefan Langerman
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Erik D. Demaine .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Tokyo University of Science , Tokyo, Japan

    Jin Akiyama

  2. The University of Electro-Communications , Tokyo, Japan

    Hiro Ito

  3. Tokai University , Tokyo, Japan

    Toshinori Sakai

  4. Osaka Prefecture University , Sakai, Japan

    Yushi Uno

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Demaine, E.D., Langerman, S. (2016). Bust-a-Move/Puzzle Bobble Is NP-complete. In: Akiyama, J., Ito, H., Sakai, T., Uno, Y. (eds) Discrete and Computational Geometry and Graphs. JCDCGG 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9943. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48532-4_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48532-4_9

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-48531-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-48532-4

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