Puyo Pop (thing)

Format : Neo Geo Pocket
Published by SNK
Developed by Sega Enterprises Ltd.
1999 Rating: ****

You know, there's a lot of tosh spoken about crack being addictive. Compared to Puyo Pop, a portable reworking of the Megadrive classic Puyo Puyo 2 Expert, crack is just "a bit more-ish". Similar in gameplay to Tetris or Columns, Puyo Pop is possible the zenith of this style of game. I won't bother to explain it here as you get the basic idea. The main differences with this version are the Puyo are rather too small to have proper eyes like on their home console counterparts. Just about every element of the game can be customised. If you beat it on hard (which took me a while, and practically destroyed the arm I was leaning on to get the best lighting) you get to mess around with the 2 player options without a second player, and can even mess around with the AI. And of course the speech is cool, although unintelligible to me. Then there's the bizarre characters, such as the Samurai mole and the fish with legs that sounds like Eric Idle.

One of the best games for the platform, up there with SNK vs. Capcom.