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Puzzle Bobble 3DX

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Puzzle Bobble 3DX
Puzzle Bobble 3DX cover
Developers
Taito
Publishers
Europe Empire Interactive
Japan CYBERFRONT Corporation
Release dates
Windows 2001
Taxonomy
Modes Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives Side view
Controls Direct control
Genres Puzzle
Art styles Cartoon, Pixel art
Themes Fantasy
Series Puzzle Bobble
Puzzle Bobble 3DX on HowLongToBeat
Puzzle Bobble 3DX on IGDB
Puzzle Bobble 3DX guide on StrategyWiki
Puzzle Bobble 3DX on MobyGames
Puzzle Bobble 3DX on Wikipedia
Subseries of Bubble Bobble
Puzzle Bobble 1995
Bust-A-Move 2: Arcade Edition 1996
Puzzle Bobble 2 1997
Puzzle Bobble 3DX 2001
Puzzle Bobble 4 2000
Super Puzzle Bobble 2001
Bust-A-Move Online 2007
Puzzle Bobble (2019) 2019
Puzzle Bobble 2 (2019) 2019
Puzzle Bobble 2X / Bust-A-Move 2 Arcade Edition & Puzzle Bobble 3 / Bust-A-Move 3 S-Tribute 2023

Key points

Released as Bust-A-Move 3DX in Europe.
Does not run well on Windows 10. See Increase Rendering Resolution for a fix.
Music might not loop properly in Vista and later. See Music not looping properly for a fix.

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
Simple disc check.
Windows
This game is not available digitally.
Japan and Europe only.

Game data

Im-game general settings.
Im-game general settings.

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\CONFIG.SGS[Note 1]

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\UVSAVE.BIN[Note 1]

Video

Graphics feature State Notes
Widescreen resolution
4:3 aspect ratio.
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
640x480 only; for higher 4:3 resolutions see Increase Rendering Resolution.
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Anti-aliasing (AA)
High-fidelity upscaling
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
Enabled after the "Now Starting Check." screen at startup.
60 FPS
120+ FPS
High dynamic range display (HDR)

Input

External input settings.
External input settings.

Audio

In-game audio settings.
In-game audio settings.

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Royalty free audio
Red Book CD audio
[1]

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
Japanese
Japanese UI only available in the Japanese release.

Network

Multiplayer types

Type Native Players Notes
Local play
2 Versus, Co-op
LAN play
Online play

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
DirectDraw 7
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

Issues fixed

Music not looping properly

As a side effect to this fix, music will now play on cue 100% of the time due to it not having to access the CD.
The disc is still required to play the game.
How to use _inmm.dll[2]
  1. Download the _inmm.dll installer and extract it, then run the installer.
  2. Open your game CD in any application that rips audio CDs, and rip the audio into an easy to find place, preferably into a folder in the game's directory.
  3. Open _inmmcnf.exe, and on the "Method" tab, change the "default" option to DirectShow.
  4. Select the "_inmm.dll" tab, then click "add".
  5. Go to the folder you ripped the game's music into. Then select all of the "track" files.
  6. Select "Save", go to the folder you installed Puzzle Bobble 3DX/Bust-A-Move 3DX in, then save the .ini file.
  7. Close _inmmcnf.exe, then drag PB3.exe onto the _inmmcnf.exe file itself. This will pop up a message asking if you want to patch the executable. Select "Ok".

Increase Rendering Resolution

This also fixes poor performance in Windows 10.
Play at resolutions other than 640x480[3]
  1. Download dgVoodoo.
  2. Extract dgVoodooCpl.exe and dgVoodoo.conf to <path-to-game>, where PB3.exe resides.
  3. Open the MS folder in the dgVoodoo zip and extract DDraw.dll, D3DImm.dll, and D3D8.dll to <path-to-game>, again where PB3.exe resides.
  4. Open dgVoodooCpl.exe.
  5. Make sure the Config folder / Running instance is set to <path-to-game>, it may already be there by default.
  6. In the General tab, set Adapter(s) to use / enable to your current graphics card, Appearance to Full Screen, and Scaling mode to either Stretched, keep Aspect Ratio or Stretched, 4:3 Aspect Ratio.
  7. In the DirectX tab, make sure Disable and passthru to real DirectX is unchecked, and set Resolution to Max. You can uncheck dgVoodoo Watermark if you wish.
  8. Click Apply and exit the program.

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 95/98
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium 233 MHz
System memory (RAM) 64 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 40 MB
Video card (GPU) DirectX-compatible GPU
4 MB of VRAM


Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).

References

  1. Verified by User:Ptolemy on 2020-08-06
  2. Verified by User:Ptolemy on 2019-08-20
  3. Verified by User:Ptolemy on 2019-08-20