Earlier this year, we reported that Bubble Bobble 64 Remastered, a new fan port/hack of Taito’s classic coin-op for the 8-bit Commodore 64 home computer, was in the works from retro games developer and and journalist at Zzap! Magazine Italia Davide Bottino.

And now, after what Davide Bottino describes as “months of pixel pushing, palette tweaking,” Bubble Bobble C64 Remastered is now available to download and play.

Davide Bottino describes his aim when creating Bubble Bobble C64 Remastered as being to improve the “graphical fidelity of the C64 version while preserving its classic gameplay. “ Bottino further describes Bubble Bobble C64 Remastered as “a fan-made radical enhancement—with all-new graphics—of the Commodore 64 version of Taito’s Bubble Bobble, originally developed by Software Creations and published by Firebird in 1987.”

Davide Bottino’s first experience of playing Bubble Bobble was on the original Commodore 64 port, bu years later, upon discovering the arcade original, Bottino realized that there was room for improvement on the official Commodore 64 port. He explains that Bubble Bobble C64 Remastered is, “Technically speaking, a hack of the original program rather than a complete rewrite, featuring fully redesigned sprites and backgrounds. The new graphics, directly converted from the arcade version, offer greater detail and fidelity to the original look and feel, while being optimized for both CRT and modern monitors, to offer the best possible experience on real hardware end emulators alike.”

Despite pushing 40 years old, Bubble Bobble remains popular with gamers to this day, with a new official release in the series for modern formats titled, “Bubble Bobble Sugar Dungeons,” due for release next year, as we previously reported, but in the meantime , fans of the adorable Bub and Bob can download and enjoy Bubble Bobble C64 Remastered from itch.io.