In the game, each player controls one of the two Bubble Dragons, Bub and Bob. The player can move along platforms, as well as jump to those above and to the side, similar to most platform games.

The player can also blow bubbles. These can trap enemies, who are defeated if the bubble is then burst by the player's spiny back. Bubbles that contain enemies can be popped at the same time resulting in different foods being projected around the level. Each enemy trapped in a bubble equates to a different food. Food is consumed and transferred to points (an increasing scale of 1000 points is awarded for each enemy burst in tandem with another meaning: one enemy burst equals one food item worth 1000 points, two enemies burst equals two food items worth 1000 and 2000 points, three enemies burst equals three food items worth 1000, 2000 and 4000 points, and so on), which results in earning lives. These same bubbles also float for a time before bursting, and can be jumped on, allowing access to otherwise inaccessible areas. Players progress to the next level once all enemies on the current level are defeated.

Enemies turn "angry" — becoming pink-colored and moving faster — if they are the last enemy remaining, escape from a bubble after being left too long or a certain amount of time has been spent on the current level. A monster will also become angry if either player collects a skull (the only negative item in the game), and the monster is hit by the resulting comet crossing the screen (however, this is a rare occurrence).

After a further time limit expires, an additional invincible enemy appears for each player, actively chasing them using only vertical and horizontal movements. These do not need to be defeated to complete the level, and disappear once a player's life is lost.

Contact with enemies and their projectiles (rocks, lasers, fireballs, etc.) results in death.

The game's music was written by Japanese team Zuntata. Peter Clarke, Tim Follin and David Whittaker converted the music for the home computer ports (some versions feature the ending sequence track for the title screen music, such as on the Commodore Amiga version by David Whittaker).

The popularity of Bubble Bobble led Taito (or its licensees) to port to many home computers and video game consoles. Ports of the game were released for the Commodore 64, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Amiga, Atari ST, MSX, Amstrad CPC, Sharp X68000, PC (DOS, 1989 and 1996), Apple II, FM Towns Marty, Sega Master System, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, PlayStation, Sega Saturn, Nintendo Entertainment System, Famicom Disk System, Sega Game Gear, mobile phone (Sprint PCS), Texas Instruments TI-8x series of calculators and UltraCade's Taito Arcade Classics. A version also exists for the BBC Micro on public domain though never officially released. The original Sega Master System version had two hundred levels. Of the original 8 and 16 bit ports, the NES and Game Boy ones were made by Taito themselves. Sega converted Bubble Bobble for the Master System (although this version was not released in North America). The Commodore 64 and Spectrum versions were made by UK-based Firebird Software, and most of the other computer ports by US-based Novalogic.

In 1996 Taito announced that they lost the original source code. As Probe Entertainment was in charge of the home conversions, Taito sent them a Bubble Bobble arcade PCB so they could play the original game and reproduce its mechanics. This led to the release of Bubble Bobble also featuring Rainbow Islands for Saturn, PlayStation and PC (DOS) in 1996.

The original Game Boy and Game Boy Color versions have a Moon Water storyline, and are known as Bubble Bobble, and Classic Bubble Bobble respectively.

In 2002, a homebrew version for the TI-83 graphing calculator was released.

In October 2005, a version was released for the Xbox, PlayStation 2, and PC as part of the Taito Legends compilation of classic arcade games.

At the end of 2006 a new port for mobile phones in Europe and Japan was released.

On December 31, 2007, the NES version of Bubble Bobble was released on Nintendo's Virtual Console service for the Wii. It costs 500 Wii Points, the equivalent of US$5.

During Christmas of 2011, a new version for the Amstrad CPC, entitled Bubble Bobble 4 CPC or BB4CPC was released for free by programmer CNGSoft, as an update to the original/official CPC version, which had been criticised for its lacklustre implementation and underuse of the system's hardware potential.

Mean Machines gave the Game Boy port of the game a score of 91%, noting that while some changes had been made the game played identical to the original arcade port and "provides much addiction and challenge". The Spectrum version was also voted number 58 in the Your Sinclair Readers' Top 100 Games of All Time.

Bubble Bobble inspired many sequels, including:

• Rainbow Islands: The Story of Bubble Bobble 2 (1987)
• Rainbow Islands Extra Version (1988)
• Parasol Stars (1991 originally released for PC-Engine/TurboGrafx-16, converted for NES (Europe only), Amiga, Atari ST, and Game Boy (Europe only)
• Bubble Bobble Part 2 (1993 Nintendo Famicom, Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy)
• Bubble Bobble II (World) / Bubble Symphony (Europe, Japan, U.S.) (1994 Arcade, Sega Saturn (Japan only))
• Bubble Memories - The Story of Bubble Bobble III (1995 Arcade)
• Rainbow Islands - Putty's Party (2000 Bandai Wonderswan)
• Bubble Bobble Old & New* (Remake, 2002 Game Boy Advance)
• Rainbow Islands: Towering Adventure (2009 WiiWare, Xbox Live Arcade)
• Bubble Bobble Plus! (2009 WiiWare on the Wii) aka Bubble Bobble Neo! (2009 Xbox Live Arcadeon Xbox 360)
• Many of the characters and musical themes of Bubble Bobble were used by Taito in a tile-matching video game Puzzle Bobble (a.k.a. Bust-a-Move) and its sequels.