What’s the best puzzle game on PS2?:
7 Wonders of the Ancient World
AquaAqua
Bombastic
Carol Vorderman’s Sudoku
Egg Mania: Eggstreme Madness
Fantavision
Jelly Belly: Ballistic Beans!
Lumines Plus
Luxor: Pharaoh’s Challenge
Mercury Meltdown Remix
Mojo!
Pipe Mania
Puzzle Challenge: Crosswords And More!
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
Super Bust-A-Move
Super Bust-A-Move 2
Tetris Worlds
These are your choices?
No, I was asking others here what they thought. lol
Oh!
In that case there are so many PS2 puzzle games missing from your list.
Which ones?
Too many to mention, probably will still be a lot missing after these additions.
Been playing a lot of Mana Khemia recently, what a fantastic RPG. Had no idea it was part of the Atelier series until after I started playing, but it really goes to show that the move to HD, 3D graphics really hurt developer Gust.
The variety among the game’s events and scenarios, its boss fights, and even the dungeon design really seem like strengths of the decision to stick with 2D sprites and simplistic, but effective, 3D backgrounds.
And the high-res spritework really is impressive, a bit of a lost art really. Found an interesting thread that illustrates this well - and these are just some of the enemies in the game!
Interesting! A fair few Japanese puzzlers I hadn’t heard of here. Had no idea Media.Vision made one for Sony either!
I remember being bummed when I wasn’t able to hex edit that game to 240p, but then actually playing it and the sprites look superb at 480i. you’re right it really is a lost art
Ah, I was only focusing on US releases, but thanks still.
As you can see you’re missing a world of games only playing NTSC-U
Yeah, at first it doesn’t make the best first impression due to the camera in the opening scenes, but it’s clear most of the sprites were made for 480i instead, especially in combat!
What also sort of blew me away was how they design the background textures to make the environments look more rounded and three dimensional than they actually are. Game does the whole “sprites on 3D backgrounds” thing better than Mario and Luigi on 3DS!
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to clear Mana Khemia, I got very close but there’s a game breaking bug that the programmers at NIS America seem to have added into the game. I’m left unable to clear an assignment I took in chapter 11…I’m still gutted about it because Mana Khemia is very much a gameplay-driven RPG as you know, so watching the rest online isn’t going to have the same impact.
I actually tested this recently. one of the Atelier games actually works when hex edited to 240p, and trying it out, while decent enough the sprites looked kind of jagged, not sure if this picture captures it
I tried it in 480i and it looked like I was playing an HD remake. you can really tell a lot of effort went into the spritework and making them as crisp and clear on those backgrounds as possible
Just found out about this. Seems like a nice little update to a classic puzzle game:
Thanks for testing this - definitely confirms that Gust was making full 480i 2D graphics from top to bottom.
The Japan-only PS2 Atelier games also look quite gorgeous, check out the graphics of Atelier Viorate if you find time for it. It’s 100% 2D. I wonder how the Ar Tonelico games work?
Cool! Love me some pipe dream, last version I played were the hacking mini games in the first Bioshock, lol.
Yeah, by then Pipe Dream had pretty much been relegated to being a mini game at best, a far cry from the standalone wide releases it got back in the day.
I’ve been on a bit of a run recently to create the ultimate PS2.
The final 90000 series models with built in power supplies are the nicest overall, tiny with no external power. AND gets rid of the dust collecting ridges! But obviously no HDD bay like a fatty, and generally not compatible with FreeMcBoot.
However some early 90000 series models are compatible with FreeMcBoot, if they have a ‘P’ chassis. So I carefully searched ebay listings for a compatible one at a decent price in good condition. Pretty rare in good condition due to it being a late device bought mostly by casuals and for kids etc.
Now I’ve got the latest FreeMcBoot and run Mechapwn on it, and now it’s region free! Fantastic to finally be able to play my Japanese PS2 discs without a disc swap or mod chip. I’ve run a Japanese PSOne for PS1 games for years too, but can now just use this for all.
It works fine to play games with OPL via USB, just waiting for an MX4SIO to arrive to get better speeds. Technically it still won’t be as fast as the old HDD on the fat, but it’s so much smaller and silent running.
Will get some pics up once I have a bit of free time but am loving it at the moment.
Do try loading games over SMB
