An advantage of the NES version is you could be playing it within seconds of hitting the power button, which made it great for casual pick up games.
The sort of people playing Bubble Bobble in the 80s on C64s would almost certainly have been doing so from tape, more than likely pirated. The NES was not really on the radar of these people at all.
I heard of C64 piracy operations in northern europe where the local radio station would play C64 games for recording on sunday afternoons. That's how pervasive it was.
„Again S.S. Captain. Again of Katharsis. Again the No. 1 in Poland and again with a new import/of co2!/. Mini intro by Raf. Wonderful tune by Martin Galway. Font/logo by Jerry. Why the Polish scene is so boring??? ; no copy parties. No cool demos. No quality groups with quality stuffs etc. Its' a big shit! isn't it???”
https://spidersweb.pl/plus/2021/07/cd-projekt-story-witcher-...
They went legit in 1994. I think theirs was one of the only few tents selling original games at the Warsaw weekly computer trade fair https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=88993 'History of Polish computer trade fair 1986-20xx. HD video/hires images from Giełda Komputerowa na Grzybowskiej (1993).'
There is maybe 5% chance CD Project founders Marcin Iwiński and Michał Kiciński
https://spidersweb.pl/plus/2021/07/witcher-cdprojekt-cyberpu...
were captured in this picture selling pirated games in 1993 :)
https://c7.alamy.com/comp/2HADG1M/warszawa-031993-centralna-...
The C64 users of the time that I knew, including myself, were all using the 1541 floppy drive (keep the screwdriver handy so you can quickly pop the top off when it inevitably needs to be realigned because of how common it was for anti-piracy measures of popular games to knock the drive head around).
Still slow (but probably sped up by a 'fast load' cartridge if you were and avid user), but not quite as bad as the PET-era cassette tape situation.
And back to the main topic -- I played a lot of multiplayer Bubble Bobble on the C64 with my sisters and cousins. Enough that I can still easily recall the theme song decades later.
I don’t think many on the western side of the Atlantic appreciate how relatively poor, and tight fisted, much of Europe was and remains, even the good bits.
The screen of "Turbo 250 By Mr. Z" felt like magic. Not only could you load a game in one minute instead of ten, but you suddenly had extra commands available in the basic prompt.