The 80s had Tetris. Today we have Meteos (or Lumines, if you prefer). But the 90s had Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo!
User Rating: 9.1 | Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo PS
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo certainly is a rare ‘gem’ in the plethora of puzzle games. While Street Fighter II was indeed a sequel (again and again), Puzzle Fighter simply derives its name from the Capcom fighting series, rather than actually being a true sequel. Instead it is a block-based puzzle game where the objective is to force your opponent’s field of blocks to fill up first. Learning the basics does not take long as it all comes down to building up like-colored blocks and then destroying them with round breaker gems to trigger an attack of junk blocks on your opponent. Of course, they will be doing the same to you so timing is key, especially in advanced levels of play. The junk blocks are numbered and for each pair of new blocks you place, the counter goes down by one. Numbered blocks can be destroyed if they are adjacent to other gems being destroyed, but any desired chain reaction will not occur until the counter reaches zero and the colored number block becomes a solid gem. After playing the game enough times, anticipating the placement of your opponents junk blocks can assist in your own block building. This is where the two-player mode shines and two experts at the game can really go at it and launch massive attacks on one another in rapid succession. Unfortunately there is little in the way of handicaps, so a versus game with a seasoned pro and a neophyte can be over pretty quickly. In terms of graphics, the blocks and gems appear bright, making the four colors of red-yellow-blue-green easily distinguishable from one another. The background and characters are on par with the Street Fighter and Dark Stalkers arcade games that the Puzzle Fighter characters hail from. The character animations can be both distracting and amusing and they aren’t really necessary to the key elements of the game. However it can be very satisfying to see a substantial gem attack translated into a fiery Shoryuken by a super deformed Ken. Sound, as well, has a very Capcom-arcade feel to it with remixed tunes from the SF and DS series and a wide array of Japanese exclamations that are constantly emitted from the characters in times of both peril and success. The sound and graphics are not exactly groundbreaking, but they are exactly where they need to be to give the game its arcade feel. The PlayStation version of game plays exactly the same as the arcade, except for a slight pause for load time between battles. There are also many unlockable goodies in the way of new characters, game art, and more, but this can all be unlocked in a relatively short amount of time compared to the life of the game. The replay value lies in its addictive nature, as with most puzzle games. If you enjoy the Street Fighter games and are looking for a fighting game along those lines, beware, as this is not that game. But if you have a soft spot in your heart for the characters and enjoy a variety of puzzle games as well, this is the perfect combination. Even without background knowledge of Capcom’s games, Puzzle Fighter can be easily picked up by the average gamer.
