English

Bust-a-Move/Puzzle Bobble is NP-Complete

Computational Complexity 2015-07-10 v2 Computational Geometry

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.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1506.08409,
  title  = {Bust-a-Move/Puzzle Bobble is NP-Complete},
  author = {Erik D. Demaine and Stefan Langerman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1506.08409},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

9 pages, 9 figures. Corrected mistakes in gadgets

R2 v1 2026-06-22T10:01:38.880Z