Subject: SPF2T From: Giulio Piancastelli X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro 5.1 Date: 17 March 2002 Let's blow the bomb: I really do not consider Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo the best puzzle game of all times, even if for a certain amount of time I have surely thought it was (but that was an effect of my addiction to the game). Instead, it is probably the last great puzzle game I have seen. Yes, I mantain a web site on Puzzle Fighter, but I have (had) a couple of other favourites. Let's speak about them for a while. [Tetris - GameBoy version] The old concept, the father of all the known puzzle games, in one of its best incarnation. I remember days and nights playing at the ugly black and white GameBoy screen, completely addicted to the game, despite its semplicity (or maybe, because of it) the poor sound, and the graphic surely not at its state-of-the-art (remember there were Lynx and the Sega GameGear). But the playability, let me use this term, was unbeliavable, as well as its replayability. In a word, quite perfect for a single player puzzle game. [Puzzle Bobble] I do not understand why it should be considered as an overrated game. It is probably the second best single player puzzle game I have ever played. After some time, the matter is no more to complete all the 30 screens, but complete them scoring at least 20M points, and *that* could become an interestingly hard challenge. Puzzle masters not only complete their games, but they do it in a perfect way. The score-more-points addiction caught me even on the GameBoy incarnation of Tetris, piling blocks and leaving just a single column of free space at one of the field's size, in order to score a tetris as soon as a long vertical block came up. As far as the Tetris family, indeed, I can remember many different games. - Tetris DX for the GameBoy Color was very, very close to the perfection of the first one, with a bunch of more colors as a bonus. Unfortunately, a strange method of calculating points when dropping tiles make it to the second spot only in my personal rankings. - The New Tetris for the Nintendo 64. I have played it only once, but it was the smoothest incarnation of the Tetris family I have seen on a "new generation" console (including PSX, Saturn, and followers). Great multiplayer mode, indeed. Excellent game. - The arcade Tetris. Great music, but I did not ever manage to get in touch with it. It did feel a bit weird to me, I was not able to drop blocks in the proper way, I did not like the different challanges thrown to you all at once. Definetely not my kind of Tetris. - The bunch of Tetris on the Super Nintendo... Super Tetris 2 and Bobliss, Super Tetris 3, and the such. Hm. Not quite exciting. Probably the best one was a classic Tetris game with the addiction of particular spells to be cast on your opponent (or on yourself, there were different kinds of effects) during the One Vs. One mode - called Tetris Battle Gaiden. - Magical Tetris Challenge. A CAPCOM game. Bah. Really nothing special. - Tetris Attack. Yes, it definetely is a great game. Addictive. Superb. We can definetely speak of the "just another game" effect, as for the "just another turn" of the Civilization series. Tetris Attack is pure playability. I really do not know how to define this term, but when you play you should be able to define the difference between a great and addictive game, and game that does not really make the cut. But, as far as my preferences are concerned, I do consider Puzzle Fighter to be quite addictive, too. Maybe my approach is due to the fact that I really hate to have to study something (a pattern, a bunch of moves) in order to have fun at playing a game. My favourite games are simple arcade games, or console port of games lying on simple concepts and simple and polish realization. A classic example could be the Super Pang "panic mode" on the Super Nintendo for a couple of funny hours to pass with a friend, or that Parodius game (I do not remember exactly its name) on the PlayStation from a single player point of view, just to quote something more recent than Bubble Bobble (probably the best arcade game ever crafted, historically considered) or Bomb Jack. So, I know there are patterns in Puzzle Fighter, I have even read all the FAQs hosted by GameFAQs (and obviously my web site), I was very interested in the character by character playing strategy, in the hidden mechanics of the game and so on. But I really do not want to study something in order to have a single hour of simple fun. Fun, I say, not some kind of intellectual satisfaction coming from the fact that I have completely understood the game's mechanisms and I was very able to apply strategies at their best and to beat the computer in every single match. I have played a couple of fighting games only in my life: Mortal Kombat 3, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, and a bit of X-Men: Children of the Atom. Never learned all the moves of all the characters: I had my favourites (Sub-Zero in MK3, Bison and Chun-Li in SSF2T, IceMan in XM:CotA) and I had difficulties in learning just their moves! Fun can have nothing to do with intellectual satisfaction, in my personal not-so-humble opinion. I generally search for the first when I want to play a videogame, not for the second. But I am indeed astounded at the ones who put great effort in understanding and completely controlling all the mechanichs of a game, and this is the case for the guys on the forum saying Puzzle Fighter is boring because they know the trick. We as humans are usually fascinated by things we do not understand completely; when we indeed understand completely a thing, that thing loses its fascination. On of the exceptions is for concepts, which, if understood clearly and completely, are the keys to open new words of possibilities, but hey, we were speaking about puzzle games, not rocket science or philosophy. Indeed, I really respect people putting great effort in learning a game and its (more or less) hidden tricks. Maybe, those people can define "addictive" or "very playable" a game when, even if they know all its tricks, it is still a pleasure playing it. Anyway, in my opinion the Puzzle Fighter's diamond is *not* the game breaker that someone claimed it to be. At least, this is true at the low-medium playing level where I currently am. To make an example, I simply consider some patterns in Puzzle Bobble 3 and Puzzle Bobble 4 to be game breakers in the One Vs. One mode: unpleasant and unplayable, really unbalanced. I really would not say the same for the diamond. If any of you want to wide your puzzle gaming horizon, there are plenty of games out there: Magical Drop I, II, III; Money Puzzle Exchanger; Puzzle Bobble 1 through 4; Pop'n Pop; Pnickies; Twinkle Star Sprites (a quite original game!); Hebereke's Popoitto (there is a Super Nintendo and a PlayStation version at least, I know for sure; it's a classic Dr Mario with new clothes, much more intriguing even than that newish Dr Mario 64); Puyo Puyo and its zillions variations; Pac Attack; Klax; Kirby No Kira Kizzu on the Super Nintendo; Baku Baku Animal from SEGA, really interesting and addictive for a while. And many, many more, inlcuding Hebereke's Papoon (also known as Hebereke No Papun), Panic Bomber e Puzzle DePon. Maybe not all of them are worth rembering and playing for a long time. Pac Attack, for instance, is really a quite anonymous game, even with its "Pac" packaging. Can you imagine an attractive package for a classic superb puzzle game like Tetris? I do not. But, despite their lack of packaging attraction, maybe the Tetris incarnations I have quoted are probably the finest and greatest puzzle games ever released. A good packaging is one characteristic Puzzle Fighter has that many other puzzle games lack. Think for a while about it: Puzzle Fighter is not yet another anonymous puzzle game, only known to puzzle experts. It features Street Fighter characters, guys like Ken or Ryu that pretty quite everyone has heard of at least once in their lives. This is a great an attractive package. Another example of it could be the Puzzle Bobble series. Puzzle Bobble features elements from one of the greatest arcade of all times, Bubble Bobble: bubbles, drakes, explosions and such. A more recent example is Pokemon Puzzle League. I looked at a couple of its screenshots, and that game is nearly identical to the good'ol Tetris Attack. Tetris Attack, which was a really interesting puzzle game with a Nintendo flavour (the "gay Yoshi" and other charachters), another packaging example. Nintendo hopes to sell copies of PPL even to guys who normally do not buy (or stay away from buying) puzzle games, just because the package (the Pokemon theme) is attractive, and CAPCOM followed the same logic as well. I am not saying this is wrong. Only, please do not the package overwhelm you and your feelings about the game. Ranting about that "stupid gay Yoshi" does not have anything to do with the playability of a videogame, which should be the first (and almost only) quality to check for in any videogame. Packaging (the Street Fighter characters, Yoshi and other Nintendo pals, Pokemons) could be more or less attractive at the first glance, but what really counts in medium and long terms is the playability of the game. Another interesting characteristic of Puzzle Fighter is its extremely clear feedback to any user's action: you know exactly what is going on in every moment, and you are able to distinguish good from better actions on the basis of the kind of feedback you receive. The Danger meter, the different moves with different sounds and flashing graphics, the character posture (stands when it's all ok, s/he's on her/his knees when the game becomes difficult) contribute to this extremely pleasant feeling of having control over all the aspects and elements in the game. The same could be true for Versus Mode in the latest Puzzle Bobble games, even if designers should pay attention not to overwhelm the player with graphics, sounds and feedback, because it could be rather confusing instead of helpful. Puyo Puyo, as far as I can remeber, does not offer a particular feedback for moves, combos, counters and so on... and, at least the first and original version, this fact makes it to be a boring and rather flat playing experience. Lastly, let me say something about the new generation of puzzle games, like Wetrix (and its sequel Aqua Aqua) or Devil's Dice. I really do not see any game well worth to be played for a long time. More, I do not see anything better than the most superb and finest puzzle games we already know, nor than our beloved Puzzle Fighter. Wetrix and Devil's Dice, or just the new generation of puzzle game, trying to put new beef in the genre adding the third dimension to the playing field, are way too complicated and difficult to control than our beloved classics. I have played Wetrix, and it was no intuitive at all. Could we say that Tetris, Puzzle Fighter, Puzzle Bobble or even Tetris Attack are not intuitive? I fear not. I have not personally played Devil's Dice, but if you check its review on IGN (http://psx.ign.com) you see that at the bottom of the page a guy is complaining just about the two things I have pointed out: complication and diffculty of control. So, I can conclude repeating again my own personal not-so-humble opinion about Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo: yes, it is a great game; no, it is probably not the best puzzle game ever crafted; but yes, it is probably the last great puzzle game ever crafted, at least for now. Greetings, Giulio.