Dr. Sudoku Hands-On

Sudoku, in case you're not familiar with it, is the latest super-happy, fun logic puzzle craze that's sweeping the nation via such mediums as newspapers, magazines, books, Web sites, and cell phones. Often likened to the Rubik's Cube, garden-variety Sudoku is a logic-based puzzle that tasks you with arranging the numbers one through nine on a 9x9 grid in such a way that no number is ever repeated in a row, a column, or one of the nine 3x3 squares that make up the 9x9 whole. The difficulty of individual Sudoku puzzles is often determined by how many number positions you're given at the start, though the often-symmetrical arrangement of these numbers is certainly a factor as well.

There are plenty of ways for you to get your Sudoku fix if logic puzzles are what floats your boat, and if you own a handheld console--whether it be a Game Boy Advance, a Nintendo DS, or a PlayStation Portable--2006 is the year that you get to add yet another flavor of Sudoku to what is already a bafflingly long menu. Take-Two, Activision, and Ubisoft are among the publishers looking to jump onboard the Sudoku bandwagon right now, along with Mastiff, whose Dr. Sudoku game for the GBA is currently scheduled for release next month.

Although Sudoku puzzles are readily available at little or no cost if you have an Internet connection or read one of the many newspapers that feature them, it's actually not difficult to make a case for Dr. Sudoku being worth a look. The game will not only ship with no fewer than 1,000 puzzles ranging from "very easy" to "very hard," but it will also feature an editor that can be used to create your own puzzles from scratch or to enter puzzles from your unwieldy broadsheet newspapers and desktop computers into the far more public-transportation-friendly GBA or DS.

The editor is extremely easy to use because, while creating a viable Sudoku puzzle can arguably be as challenging as solving one, Dr. Sudoku gives you the option to simply fill the grid with numbers at random and then delete as many as you want to individually. Furthermore, when making a puzzle of your own, you can push a button and have your creation analyzed to check whether or not it's possible to solve.

When attempting to solve a puzzle, you'll basically just be moving a cursor around the grid and using a small onscreen keypad to enter your numbers. You'll be able to delete numbers that you've entered previously, of course, but you shouldn't need to, because you can also opt to "pencil in" up to four numbers per square when trying to decide which one belongs there. These numbers appear in the four corners of the square in question--they've very small, but perfectly legible and extremely useful.

Aside from its purely functional visuals and elevator music soundtrack, Dr. Sudoku really doesn't appear to be doing anything wrong at this point. The question is whether or not Sudoku puzzles are as well suited to the GBA as they clearly are to daily newspapers and Web sites. The answer? We'll have that figured out in time for our full review closer to the game's release.