For me personally I’d have to go with Puyo Puyo 2 on the Saturn. This is where the series peeked in my opinion.
There’s a marble game on Apple Arcade…
Marble It Up: Mayhem
And one on Switch…
Marblelous Animals
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I recently grabbed Pitman (Catrap in the west)
And I have been having great fun with an otherwise pretty standard rock pushing type puzzler for one reason - it has a rewind feature.
The rewind feature takes all the frustration away from screwing up step 23 of 24 you experience in these things.
It’s 25fps so kinda choppy. So many Z80 console games were half framerates in that era, my theory is MSX/SG1000 etc needed lower framerates to run decently and that code ended up getting ported or reused when making games on the more capable Mark III/Game Boy etc.
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I think there were a lot of choppy Game Boy and Game Gear games because they felt the screen blurring masked it somewhat. SMS games that weren’t on GG tend to be smoother.
That’s true and was likely why they thought they could get away with it in some cases, but I do see a clear link between teams moving from Z80 PCs like the MSX and Spectrum to producing choppy console games, especially on Z80 based consoles.
Look at Konami on Game Boy:
Contra (from Famicom) - smooth
Castlevania (from Famicom) - 60fps (but has slowdown)
Nemesis (from MSX - used the MSX name not the Arcade/Famicom Gradius) - choppy 30fps
Game Gear/Mark III CPU was weaker than Game Boy too due to the SG1000 heritage so often had even more choppy stuff.
Definitely, there’s some early Wonderswan games like this too despite the hardware being more than capable to produce smooth movement. The Putty-Rainbow Islands game is a good example
Oh neat, I didn’t know that existed. I’ll have to load it up on the vita and check it out.
I never knew this. I always assumed GB was weaker… probably just due to the monochrome presentation.
Picross DS was such an obsession of time I actually printed some of the puzzles in plain paper and would do them ocasionally durring college classes. Funnily enough, a friend of mine from back then mentioned this went we last talked. We hadn’t talked to each other for almost 10 years, but we stumbled upon each other on Tinder of all places, in a city I don’t even live in (but it’s where she lives now). A few years back I was living in another city, and weidly enough she was there as well, but we had lost contact and the briefest we’d seen each other is when we both thought we had seen one another someplace, and it turns out, we actually did. And just yesterday she texted me to say she’s in town! Crazy!
So, yeah, Picross DS. Great game.
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I’ve spent so much time on Columns and Puzzle Bobble. Puyo Puyo is interesting but I need to figure out how to play it better because I always get my ass kicked.
There are good online Puyo Puyo strategy videos I’ve seen on YouTube that make combos easier to put together. After you see them explained it becomes a bit easier over time. Practice makes perfect of course.
The most important thing is to have the concepts explained though.
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The DS version of Puyo Puyo 7 had a pretty cool simulation mode where you placed Puyo using the touchscreen and then set it all off to see how things would play out. The visuals were all in charming 8-bit style as well. There are similar alternatives online: https://puyonexus.com/chainsim/
I’m shocked I didn’t mention Mr Driller until now - but it’s corking action puzzler, you’ve really got to consider every move you make while blocks are falling down above you and the play-field is always dynamically changing.
It’s amazing how much Namco got out of the initial concept, expanding on it with new variants and ideas all the way up to GameCube’s Drill Land, which I hadn’t played in single player until the Switch port came along. My previous favourite was Mr Driller Ace on Game Boy Advance due to the Pacteria mode, but Drill Land’s Hole of Duraga attraction perfects the ideas from that!
Pushmo is one of my favs on 3DS
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My next two favourites fall in line with the likes of MaBoShi - they feel like puzzles that could exist in the real world as physical objects:
グリルロジック (Grille Logic), PlayStation
This game tests the limits of your spatial awareness. But it’s also really hard to explain in words - so check out a rare video here:
Basically, you’ve got a 4x4 board which rotates clockwise, its arrows indicating the orientation. You’re meant to either:
- Look at the holes on the board and place corresponding arrows for each rotation so that they show up as the board rotates
- Look at the arrows on the board, and punch holes inside the board such that the arrows show up while it rotates.
Much easier said than done - and later loops mess with your head by scrambling the order of the arrows you have to put on the board, so your head has to figure out which orientation the holes will be in ahead of time.
So far I’ve only made it to loop 4, which seems much too difficult for my human brain to parse. I’m considering cheating with the PSP PS1 Archives suspend option to pause the timer…
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The other game is:
U-SA (右左), PlayStation, released in the west as Turnabout
This one has an even more physical feel to it than Grille Logic, since you’re literally rotating a box full of items and spheres, and the audio-visual presentation cements this with crisp sound effects of different materials, and an entrancing kaleidoscope background that changes with every rotation.
The aim is the rotate this box in 90 degree segments to make a small number of colourful orbs disappear by meeting each other, with new levels bringing different box shapes and inner contraptions to make things increasingly difficult. Initially you might find yourself solving puzzles without having to think much, but soon enough it’s impossible to clear puzzles without actually thinking about where chokepoints might occur.
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The stage rotation in this one makes me think of Guru Logi Champ.
We’ve all played that masterpiece, right?
Long live Compile!
Got my cartridge ready to go! Never did finish it though, the later rescue mission worlds were excruciatingly difficult.
Definitely one to add to the favourite puzzle games list
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There’s another marble puzzler on sale on steam right now for $0.50.
It seems like someone hit the random button lol… but for that price it might be worth it. 93 percent positive reviews!
Edit: looks like there’s two sequels too, 2018 and 2020.
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