In each level, Bub and Bob must defeat each enemy present by trapping them in bubbles and popping, who turn into bonus items when they hit the ground.

Bubble Bobble became one of Taito's biggest arcade successes, and is credited with inspiring the creation of many similar screen-clear platform games that followed.

It was acclaimed by critics for its character design, memorable soundtrack, gameplay, and multiplayer, and is often listed among the greatest games of all time.

Enemies turn "angry"—turning pink in color and moving faster—if they escape from a bubble after being left too long or the players spend a certain amount of time on the current level.

After a further time limit expires, an additional invincible enemy appears for each player, actively chasing them using only vertical and horizontal movements.

Completing Level 100 in single-player mode reveals a message stating that the game has not truly ended and a hint to the player: "Come here with your friend".

If this mode is completed with two players, a second "happy end" is displayed in which Super Drunk (the defeated boss) is revealed to be the brothers' parents under the control of some outside influence.

[9] Thinking about what kind of things women like to draw or sketch, Mitsuji created an extensive list of over 100 ideas, and after a process of elimination selected bubbles as the core game mechanic.

[10][9][11] His initial idea was to have the player control a robot with a spike on its head to pop bubbles—Mitsuji disliked it for not being "cool", instead preferring dinosaurs with ridges along their back.

[13] Mitsuji intended the game to be played by couples, leading to the creation of the multiple endings, which differ based on player performance.

[15][16] Alongside Arkanoid, Taito licensed the game to Romstar for distribution in the United States,[17] and to Electrocoin Automatics for Europe.

[9] Bubble Bobble was ported to many home video game consoles and computers, including the Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, Apple II, Amiga, Famicom Disk System, Nintendo Entertainment System, MSX2, and Master System—the last of these has two hundred levels as opposed to the arcade version's 100 levels, and was released in Japan as Final Bubble Bobble.

[8] A version for the X68000 was developed by Dempa and released in 1994, which includes a gamemode paying homage to Mitsuji's later arcade game Syvalion, titled Sybubblun.

[18] In 1996, Taito announced that the source code for Bubble Bobble had been lost, leading to all subsequent home conversions to be reverse-engineered from an original arcade board.

[8] In Japan, Game Machine listed Bubble Bobble on their November 1, 1986, issue as the second-most-successful table arcade cabinet of the month, after Taito's Arkanoid.

Your Sinclair magazine ranked the ZX Spectrum version at #58 in their "Top 100 Games of All Time" in 1993 based on reader vote.

[40] GamesRadar+ also labeled it the 24th greatest Nintendo Entertainment System of all time in 2012 for its advancements over other games of its genre and its usage of multiple endings.

In December 2007, the NES version of Bubble Bobble was released in North America on Nintendo's Virtual Console service for the Wii.