incorporates the same gameplay principles and premise of prior games in the Bust-A-Move series, as a colorful bubble shooter.

Baton involves holding the Wii Remote upright and tilting it left or right to determine the shooting angle.

Bubble-swapping is mapped to the down button on the d-pad for the Wii Remote and Classic Controller, or a downward flick of the Nunchuk's analog stick.

to "maximize the intuitive nature of the Wii controller to create a revolutionary offering of the highly popular Bust-A-Move franchise",[1] eventually leading to the idea of leveraging the Wii Remote's expansion capabilities to allow up to eight players to compete on a single screen by having two players share one Wii controller by each holding one of its two individual parts - the remote itself or its external controller.

"[7] Birnbaum criticized the game's control scheme as "lack[ing] ergonomic foresight" when playing with the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, its graphics as "lackluster" and too similar to the Dreamcast version, its multiplayer as "devoid of fun due to its emphasis on chaos rather than skill", and shooting mode, which criticisms he directed at the entire game, as "poorly implemented, tacked-on, and lacking inspiration.