Bust a Move, or Puzzle Bobble takes the falling blocks genre popularized by Tetris, Columns and Mean Bean Machine, and turns it on its head. Instead of the player trying to guide and arrange a falling piece into the correct place to destroy the adjacent pieces, in Bust-A-Move, the player aims and then shots a coloured bubble into an array of similar bvubbles. When three bubbles of the same colour touch, they all pop.
The idea is to destroy all the bubbles on a level, or to force your opponents' level to fill with bubbles.