Gaming Target - Game Boy: Puyo Pop

Written by Ilan Mejer on February 26, 2002

Review: A classic SEGA puzzle game finally gets its share of the spotlight in a new Gameboy Advance title.

Sega's Puyo Pop has shown up in America in a variety of forms in the past, though you may not have realized it. The Super Nintendo and SEGA's Genesis both received titles that were УfranchisedФ versions of the Puyo Puyo series of puzzlers. After limited releases on the Playstation and Saturn, Puyo Puyo makes a triumphant return to the West, in the form of the insanely addictive Gameboy Advance puzzle game, Puyo Pop. Join Arle, the apprentice sorceress, and her fun-loving monster companion, Carbuncle, on yet another one of her humorous adventures, involving a lovable cast of fifteen wacky Puyo players.

The Puyo franchise is easily the most unique take on the Russian classic, Tetris. You must keep your play field clear of garbage by manipulating Puyo drops as they fall in pairs with each half represented by one of five colors. You eliminate the Puyo drops by joining at least four like-colored drops. What makes Puyo Pop unique is that your pit is ruled by gravity, so clearing a space of Puyo drops will cause any drops resting above them to drop down and take their place, possibly initiating a chain of further Puyo drop combinations. The game's strategy relies heavily on the player's mastery of the large variety of combo-chaining techniques. The falling pairs of Puyo drops are shifted left and right using the d-pad and tapping A or B will rotate the Puyo drops clockwise and counterclockwise. This familiar control scheme makes jumping into Puyo Pop a piece of cake.

What makes Puyo Pop stand apart from the rest of the Tetris clones is its competitive element. Both the single player modes and the multiplayer modes are set up to be competitions. Whether you are challenging one of the fifteen anime-characters in the story mode or your friends in multi-player you will be competing against another player with exactly the same pit and exactly the same lineup of Puyo drops. The victor is determined simply by the last one standing. In order to eliminate your opponent(s) you need only bury them by overflowing their pits with garbage blocks.

Puyo Pop has benefited from the inclusion of a robust multiplayer mode. Double Puyo Pop allows you to link up with another Gameboy Advance owner. This is the perfect way for you to challenge your friends individually. Everybody Puyo Pop is similar, but features four players, all depicted on screen (zoomed out) at once. You may link up to 3 additional GBA systems, however, should you not have 3 people to play with, the computer (with adjustable AI) will take over those positions not filled by human players. In either mode, you may play with one cartridge or as many cartridges as you have players. The multi-cartridge mode virtually eliminates download times, and adds the characters and game modes that have previously been unlocked in the story mode.

Puyo Pop is not the most beautiful game the GBA has ever seen, but it easily holds its own with just about any puzzle game out there, and even compares favorably to its older console brothers. Each of the fifteen characters is wonderfully designed and vibrantly depicted on-screen. The play fields, or pits, vary according to the location you are currently playing in. However, the true stars of the show are the Puyo drops themselves, and their bubbly animations are a true pleasure to behold. Each of the five different colored drops looks unique, sporting a variety of facial expressions. When one or more like-colored Puyo drops rest in adjacency, you see them begin to bounce and meld, until they grow into a chain of four or more and happily cancel each other out. The Puyo drops are constantly entertaining, and never distracting, truly the perfect graphical compliment to the splendidly enthralling gameplay.

The music in Puyo Pop is significantly better than what you would expect from a puzzle game. As you progress through the story mode, and face more dramatic encounters, the music you will be Сfighting' to will increase in tempo and excitement accordingly. Each music track also has a Сpanic' version that begins to play when your situation becomes precarious. The music is quite entertaining and never seems to get old. Technically, it is quite superior to many previous GBA audio efforts, whose tunes could easily pass for GBC music at times. The sound effects for the dropping Puyos, and their cancellations all chime true and ring pleasantly. What truly keeps your ears occupied, however, or are the voices. Every significant on-screen event, be it a chain combo, garbage block cancellation, or line cleared will elicit some sort of response from your character or your opponent. The majority of them are actually in Japanese, but they remain hilarious nonetheless. The voices scream emotion and personality, and those few that are in English are so exaggerated that even after repeated exposure, I cannot help but grin. Hearing Arle scream УAAAAaaaah,Ф when defeated or Incubus burst out with УKiss Me!Ф when he completes a decent chain combo never gets old. A victory will usually net you responses in the form of entire sentences.