Meteos: Disney Magic

Written by Chris Reiter  on November 22, 2006

First Impressions: I want to be where the tetrominoes are!

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Where would puzzle games be today without Tetris? Nowhere! Ever since Alexey Pajitnov laid out his visionary design in the shape of falling tetromino blocks, developers have often tried to recreate their own variations of Tetris. Many of these attempts met with mixed success. However, as of late Q Entertainment has officially gone puzzle crazy and revived the genre in a big way with its hits Lumines (PSP) and Meteos (DS). With its lineup of quirky and clever offerings, Q Entertainment is now the genre's it guys. Recently Buena Vista Games, the interactive publishing arm of Disney, acquired the rights to Meteos. Now the game is being reborn in a new, Disney kind of way with Meteos: Disney Magic.

In case you've never played Meteos here's the gist: as Meteos blocks drop down, they'll form vertical tiles. Arranging three similar squares either horizontally or vertically with the DS stylus creates a rocket boost. The object is to shoot these rockets to the top of the screen in order to make the tiles disappear. Often you have to make additional rockets to push the massive floating body of tiles skyward.

Outside of Disney's integration of its familiar themes, very little of this core game play has changed. One slight difference is that Meteos: Disney Magic requires that you tilt the DS sideways so you look at the game from the longer, book-like angle instead of top to down. This way the play screen becomes larger on the right while the left side features illustrated moving artwork pertaining to one of Disney's classic properties. Examples include Lilo and Stitch, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Winnie the Pooh. Another difference is that you can slide Meteos blocks horizontally, but only in the Easy and Normal modes. In hard mode you can only drag the tiles up and down like in the original Meteos.