Puyo Puyo 2, known as Puyo Pop outside of its native Japan, is a middle nineties puzzle game that was created and published by Compile. It has seen numerous releases and re-releases, and was also once called Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine. On the Super Nintendo, Puyo Puyo became the popular Kirby series. It offers both a single player and two player competitive mode, and was ported to a great many formats, including the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the SEGA, and the Game Boy. It has obvious roots in both Dr.
Mario and Tetris, and features characters from Madou Monogatari.
In this Japanese version, Puyos are little jello creatures. They fall from the sky onto a large grid. The goal, be it single player or two-player versus, is to fill the neighboring grid to the brim with garbage. The screen is split into two distinct areas, so the user can always see where he is in comparison to his opponent. The puyos fall from the screen, generally in pairs, and continue to free fall until they touch another puyo on the screen or the border of the grid. If one puyo in a pair touches something that its partner does not, the pair will break and the free puyo will continue to drop.
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The puyos are different colored, and when four or more puyos of the same color come into contact with one another, they pop and vanish. They can be adjacent in many ways: horizontal and vertical, and can involve many more than four puyos if the grid is well organized. When the puyos vanish, others above them fall to take their place, often creating more chains (combinations) when they fall into place. Chains are called Rensa in the game.
Since Puyo Puyo 2 is a versus game, be it against another human or the computer, there has to be some method of competition. This occurs whenever a Rensa is made. The puyos that are removed from the players grid will appear as Ojama, or Nuisance Puyos in the opposing grid, filling the competition’s grid more quickly. The same is true in reverse. Therefore, the player who can most quickly remove his own puyos will be the most likely to leave his opponent in a jam. There is not so much a winner as there is a clear cut loser. The person who has puyos touching the top of his grid first is the loser.
Puyo Puyo 2 is a fun and colorful little puzzle game with a decent story mode in the single player version of the game, even featuring different characters for the user to face. It is a satisfyingly frustrating play that will have you addicted in no time flat.
