| Graphics: |   4 |
| SFX: | 4 |
| Music: |  3.5 |
| Gameplay: | 4 |
| Challenge: | 4 |
| Replay: | 4 |
| Overall: | 4 |
| Genre: | Puzzle |
| Reading ability: | Not Required |
| Company: | Ban Dai |
Background:
I'm one of the many college guys in the mid- to late-'90s whose guilty pleasure was watching the Sailor Moon dub on TV. Sailor Moon really was a dumb show, but my excuse was, "I just watch it because I like the character designs!" Really, it just boiled down to being excited that anime was being shown on TV once again. Think what you want of Sailor Moon, but you have to admit that some decent video games have been released under the Sailor Moon name. I bought and reviewed Sailor Moon R back in 1998 or so (I never did put a date on my reviews). Even friends and cousins who didn't care for the show liked the game because it was a decent Final Fight clone with two players. There are some pretty cool Sailor Moon puzzle games too, and this is one of them.
Oh yeah, and in case you were wondering, "Kondo wa puzzle de oshiyoki yo" translates, "This time I will punish you by puzzle!"
The Game:
The gameplay is the same as BreakThru! (also available on the SFC/SNES) by Alexey Pajitnov of Tetris fame, with the the added element of a vs battle system. You start out with a screen full of multi-colored blocks, and you must remove clumps of adjacent blocks of a minimum of 2 at a time. When you remove a large enough group of blocks at once, your character will exclaim and will send over black blocks to your opponent's side. These black blocks can only be removed when adjacent blocks are removed. Other obstacles are little umbrella icons that will keep blocks from falling down properly below them. Other icons are bombs and arrows. The bombs will clear blocks surrounding them and the arrows will clear all blocks in a straight line in the direction they are pointed.
Graphics:
Graphics are nice and clean, animations are decent.
Music/Sound:
Music isn't anything special, and sound effects are serviceable. As can be expected, the characters talk during gameplay.
Challenge and replay:
The game has a story mode for one player and of course friends can play in 2P mode. It will take longer to strategize your play in each match. Think things through before just randomly removing blocks. If you get stuck in a corner with no adjacent matching colors, you'll get stuck. As Admiral Ackbar would say, "IT'S A TRAP!"
The Good:
It's a nice puzzle game, and with Sailor Moon characters! The Sailor Moon characters are always cute to see in games. I'll always have my short-hair fetish for Sailor Mercury, even though I don't care to sit down and watch the show.
The Bad:
Taisen matches can be over with in a matter of seconds if you can dish out crap fast enough, otherwise they usually may drag out for very long periods of time.
Overall:
This isn't the most fast-paced taisen puzzle game, but it is still worth checking out nevertheless.
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