Final Battle Bowser
Tetris Attack was a particular rendition of the puzzle game Panel de pon that was released in the mid 90’s. Blocks of various shapes and colors fill your screen and are lifted at a steady speed toward the top. As you get above the 2/3 height mark, the rate of lift increases. Your job is to match 3 or more blocks together by color/shape, causing them to disappear, to create more room for yourself, and keep from hitting the top, which ends the game.
Matching 4 or more blocks together at once causes the lift to halt temporarily. The time determined by how many blocks you negate at once. Chain reactions are a bread and butter aspect of the game. To form a chain reaction, you think ahead, cause blocks to be negated, and have others fall into place because of it.
In the battle mode of the game, which is the most reknowned, the negation of 4 or more blocks at once causes a large brick of varying space occupation ability to fall onto your opponent’s screen, put them closer to the top, and generally throw a wrench in their plans. Bricks can be negated by making contact with them while negating color/shape blocks.
The bricks formed from chain reactions though can grow to full screen spanning size if you have enough skill, and only one layer at a time can be negated on bricks whose thickness encompasses more than a single solid row. Negated bricks transform into color/shape blocks.
The above picture is rather silly, but there is a bit of truth to it. Whether it be a true development of intuition, or the mind’s ability to read upcoming patterns beforehand, this game brings it out of the gamer. In truth, at higher levels of competitive play, it is a slightly ethereal skill which you must rely on. The thing is it happens.
Ask just about anyone who is or was an avid Panel de pon gamer and they’ll tell you that (most often prevalent at the beginning of the period they first became serious about the game) they even unwillingly dreamed about block configurations, chain reactions, etc. regarding this game. It affects the mind in a way that few games can.
Panel de pon existed before Tetris attack, and Pokemon Puzzle league for the Nintendo 64 took the difficulty to new levels with improved A.I. While “Planet Puzzle League” for the DS now gives us online play. But for many, Tetris attack, because of the music, or the familiar characters, the nostalgia, or whatever personal reasons people may have makes it the most beloved version of the game. I recently began playing again after several years of having neglected my skills, but sure enough I bounced back quickly.
Nintendo somewhat recently released Pokemon Puzzle league for download cheap onto your Wii for the Virtual Console. Planet Puzzle league for the DS is less than $30. Whether you want to try this game, or pick it up again, it is highly recommended. Personally, since I still have a working SNES, I choose to play Tetris Attack more often than not. But in any case, this is a game that people definitely should still be playing.
