The 4th round is through and we have our winner, and I expected it to be just a little bit tighter than it was. It was an expected battle, but the eventual winner: Super Mario Brothers
Round 5 proved to be a little awkward for me as I struggled to find games that would fit in this category, and some would say that a couple of games don't fit here. I couldn't think of where else they may go, so here it is: Puzzle Games. The nominees are:
Bomberman - Bomberman is a hugely successful series of games that has made it on to numerous gaming systems in various forms. The concept is simple. You are placed in to a small maze with lots of blocks, and by strategically placing bombs you destroyed the blocks until you succeeded in the objective of the game. While never a great single player experience, this game truly came alive though when played against friends.
Chu Chu Rocket - Given away free by Sega for the Dreamcast, "Chu Chu Rocket" is a truly bizarre game. The premise of the game is to guide mice towards a rocket ship while at the same time trying to direct cats to your opponent. You did this by placing arrowed tiles on to a grid which pointed either up, down, left, or right. The person who had the most mice at the end of the alloted time won. With four people playing at once the screen got truly frantic.
Columns - Sega's answer to the classic "Tetris." The aim of the game was very simple. Jewels would drop down in to a pit and you had to destroy them by matching up three of the same kind of jewels in a row (either horizontally, vertically, or diagonally). If the jewels got too high then it was game over. A simple style of game which took moments to understand but countless hours to master.
Lemmings - The green spiky haired "Lemmings" stormed on to the scene with a bang (sometimes literally). The idea for the game came from the myth that lemmings were suicidal creatures that threw themselves off cliffs. You had to guide your band of lemmings across various obstacles to get them to the safety of home. To do this you had several tasks that you could assign to a lemming that would destroy or build over the landscape.
Minesweeper - Perhaps one of the simplest looking games to be devised, but also one of the most fiendish. You are given a grid with a set number of mines within. Your task is to avoid all of the mines by using logic. To help you in this task is a range of numbers which indicate how many mines are in the surrounding 8 squares.
Pac Man - While many may not say this is a puzzle game, this is perhaps the closest category you could put it in to. Inspired by a pizza with a slice missing, Pac Man's task was to gobble up small dots from within a maze while avoiding the nasty ghosts. Should Pac Man gobble a power pill the tables would be turned for a short time.
Puyo Puyo - Puyo Puyo has been released under several varying names world wide (for example "Kirby's Avalanche" and "Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine") and relies on a simple idea of play. Two small jelly-bean style gems would slowly drop from the sky, and could be rotated a full 360, in to a large pit. By linking 4 or more gems together (similar colours would fuse together) the gems would blow. Puyo Puyo primarily relies on a kind of combat in a way similar to "Super Puzzle Fighter".
Puzzle Bobble - Taking the characters "Bub" and "Bob" this game took a new twist on the standard puzzle idea. Instead of gems or blocks falling down in to a pit the objective was to fire bubbles skywards. Like in "Columns", connecting three bubbles of the same colour would make them explode, but another twist was if other bubbles where solely hanging on to the destroyed bubbles they would fall down and also be removed from play.
Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo - Capcom entered in to the puzzle genre with this strange mixture of "Columns", "Street Fighter", and "Darkstalkers". Selecting a character from "Street Fighter" or "Darkstalkers" the game played similar to "Columns", but instead of 3 or more of the same coloured gems destroying each other you had to wait for a flashing power gem that would destroy the same colour along with any of the same colour chained together.
Tetris - The grandfather of puzzle games and known by everyone the world over. The premise of the game is to move various shapes made up of 4 blocks to form lines. Create a line and it would be removed from play. Removing 4 lines from play would bring forth a small noise as you created a "Tetris". This game alone made Nintendo's handheld system the Gameboy the big hit that has become.
Round 5 proved to be a little awkward for me as I struggled to find games that would fit in this category, and some would say that a couple of games don't fit here. I couldn't think of where else they may go, so here it is: Puzzle Games. The nominees are:
Bomberman - Bomberman is a hugely successful series of games that has made it on to numerous gaming systems in various forms. The concept is simple. You are placed in to a small maze with lots of blocks, and by strategically placing bombs you destroyed the blocks until you succeeded in the objective of the game. While never a great single player experience, this game truly came alive though when played against friends.
Chu Chu Rocket - Given away free by Sega for the Dreamcast, "Chu Chu Rocket" is a truly bizarre game. The premise of the game is to guide mice towards a rocket ship while at the same time trying to direct cats to your opponent. You did this by placing arrowed tiles on to a grid which pointed either up, down, left, or right. The person who had the most mice at the end of the alloted time won. With four people playing at once the screen got truly frantic.
Columns - Sega's answer to the classic "Tetris." The aim of the game was very simple. Jewels would drop down in to a pit and you had to destroy them by matching up three of the same kind of jewels in a row (either horizontally, vertically, or diagonally). If the jewels got too high then it was game over. A simple style of game which took moments to understand but countless hours to master.
Lemmings - The green spiky haired "Lemmings" stormed on to the scene with a bang (sometimes literally). The idea for the game came from the myth that lemmings were suicidal creatures that threw themselves off cliffs. You had to guide your band of lemmings across various obstacles to get them to the safety of home. To do this you had several tasks that you could assign to a lemming that would destroy or build over the landscape.
Minesweeper - Perhaps one of the simplest looking games to be devised, but also one of the most fiendish. You are given a grid with a set number of mines within. Your task is to avoid all of the mines by using logic. To help you in this task is a range of numbers which indicate how many mines are in the surrounding 8 squares.
Pac Man - While many may not say this is a puzzle game, this is perhaps the closest category you could put it in to. Inspired by a pizza with a slice missing, Pac Man's task was to gobble up small dots from within a maze while avoiding the nasty ghosts. Should Pac Man gobble a power pill the tables would be turned for a short time.
Puyo Puyo - Puyo Puyo has been released under several varying names world wide (for example "Kirby's Avalanche" and "Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine") and relies on a simple idea of play. Two small jelly-bean style gems would slowly drop from the sky, and could be rotated a full 360, in to a large pit. By linking 4 or more gems together (similar colours would fuse together) the gems would blow. Puyo Puyo primarily relies on a kind of combat in a way similar to "Super Puzzle Fighter".
Puzzle Bobble - Taking the characters "Bub" and "Bob" this game took a new twist on the standard puzzle idea. Instead of gems or blocks falling down in to a pit the objective was to fire bubbles skywards. Like in "Columns", connecting three bubbles of the same colour would make them explode, but another twist was if other bubbles where solely hanging on to the destroyed bubbles they would fall down and also be removed from play.
Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo - Capcom entered in to the puzzle genre with this strange mixture of "Columns", "Street Fighter", and "Darkstalkers". Selecting a character from "Street Fighter" or "Darkstalkers" the game played similar to "Columns", but instead of 3 or more of the same coloured gems destroying each other you had to wait for a flashing power gem that would destroy the same colour along with any of the same colour chained together.
Tetris - The grandfather of puzzle games and known by everyone the world over. The premise of the game is to move various shapes made up of 4 blocks to form lines. Create a line and it would be removed from play. Removing 4 lines from play would bring forth a small noise as you created a "Tetris". This game alone made Nintendo's handheld system the Gameboy the big hit that has become.
