Bubble Bobble, arcade and ports, were wildly popular especially in the UK, to the point that when I was working as a game dev in London in the early 2000s if you mentioned what you did to a random person the chances were they would start lamenting how complicated these modern 3D games were and how after a bit of digging it would turn out they just loved Bubble Bobble/Rainbow Islands etc.

I think it's up there with Asteroids, Defender and Robotron honestly.