Mermaids of Atlantis and Bubble Bath Babes

Mermaids of Atlantis is a decent game with a somewhat sordid history.  I first saw this game as a kid looking through titles at Blockbuster, and I was intrigued by the title, which conjured up to my imaginative little mind ideas of a great underwater empire and endless adventure, but I went with Kirby's Adventure instead, which went on to become my favorite NES game of all time (but that's another story).  It would be years before I would ever see another reference to that illusive title, and part of that reason is that it is an unlicensed title produced by American Video Entertainment, a small-time production company that primarily pushed out strange puzzle and sports titles from 1990 to 1992.  Not exactly the paragon of adventure I imagined from the title, Mermaids of Atlantis fell within the puzzle genre of games.  Fortunately, it is a pretty good one.  But that's not where the saga begins.

Before being published as Mermaids of Atlantis: The Riddle of the Magic Bubble (which gets points for having a completely unnecessary subtitle), the game began life as Bubble Bath Babes, published by a seedy little outfit called Panesian, a group dedicated to the production of pornographic NES titles.  Yup, you heard that right.  Now, if you were the sort of child who giggled with delight at the site of a crayon-crafted, crudely-drawn pair of boobs on the playground and your mental development ended right there, then Panesian was the company for you.  After all, what could be more titillating than the sight of pixelated, 48-color, 8-bit boobies?  But despite the lack of maturity involved, Panesian did manage to craft a decent, Tetris-style puzzle concept.  Game play involved colored bubbles rising to the top of the screen.  These could be moved and rotated to attempt to match like-colored bubbles, popping them and, with proper planning, causing chain reactions.  If the bubbles touched the bottom of the screen, it was game over.

This game mechanic, with several differently shaped clusters of bubbles and multiple colors, made for an excellent game that holds its own with the likes of Tetris, Columns and Dr. Mario.  It's nothing fancy, but it works.  Picking up on this, American Video Entertainment published the game with a few clever swaps; a reclining, topless girl at the bottom of the screen was redrawn as a mermaid, and cut scenes between levels told a (boring, sad to say) story about mermaids instead of presenting more 8-bit nudity.  The result is actually a fun, challenging puzzle game.  Of course, solid game mechanics aside, unlicensed NES titles were generally doomed from the beginning.  How many times have you ever seen a copy of Mermaids of Atlantis, or heard anyone speak of it?