Tag: switch

Alex Kidd 1: In Miracle World

Ive been attempting to beat the Sega Ages release of Alex Kidd 1 on the Switch. For such an early platformer the final castle is far too masocore for its own good. A lot of “Ah, what? Come on.” has been said with each new bit of progression. Every aspect of the game is loaded with quirks, which as a whole I feel work for me even if its frustrating at times. They certainly weren’t the only ones throwing a lot of paint at the wall to try and compete with Super Mario Bros.

Puyo Puyo etc.

Suketoudara attempts intimidation

Puyo Puyo is making quite the come back the past handful of years. I never had much of a taste for it in its first handful of decades, but after being reintroduced via the mashup puzzler Tetris Puyo Puyo when it came to the Switch I felt it click in. However, I was turned off by the presentation of T.P.P., so I went dormant a bit again until M2 ported the initial Arcade release of Puyo Puyo as part of the Sega Ages Switch line — its 90s arcade aesthetic being more my tune. Plus its been translated for the first time and really has a nice weird vibe without being annoying (like T.P.P. is). Of course my luck would be the following week SNES for Switch Online arrives and inexplicably brings along an untranslated Super Puyo Puyo 2 to the service that I already pay for. Its different enough that I don’t mind having both titles; but maybe its the Celestial Lords of Puyo telling me I should make up for lost time?

Tetris99

Take a number

Is this the 99th Tetris sequel? Or has there been more than that and this is simply the 99th gimmick thats been applied to the long-standing formula? Either could be accurate, but it doesn’t matter, because they’ve managed to make Tetris fresh and new once again (for the 20th? time) with Tetris99.

The concept is that this is Tetris’ answer to the Battle Royale craze thats take over FPS and 3rd Person Action games; brawl against a horde of real world players and be the last survivor. Though not with parachuting or guns you find on the floor, but rather with falling Tetriminos and garbage. If you’ve ever played any multiplayer Tetris in the past, its the same rules more or less. Eliminate lines efficiently and in quick sets of combos to generate mounds of waste to be dumped all over your opponent. But now there is 98 of them all doing the same thing. To assist you the computer will take a few command parameters to direct that trash, or you yourself can monitor everyone’s status and choose an individual from the on-screen grid of Tetris boards. As the number of players dwindle, the speed of the game ramps up, and eventually only one is left unburied. If you’ve played Tetris you can jump right on and feel the hooks sink in.

While the Battle Royale concept may have came from the world of FPS, this very much has an arcade feel to it. Which makes a lot of sense because its been developed by Arika who had long ago brought Tetris to the arcades with their Grandmaster series. The graphic elements at play also are rooted in the arcade with bright blinking indicators, combo numbers racking up, laser lines and swooshing yellow clouds criss-crossing the play area, warnings of “WATCH OUT!” alert you. The music is remixs of the classic Tetris theme that ramps its pace when you graduate to different benchmarks of survival. Its a fantastic presentation thats been generated from the mechanics rather than pasted-on elements like in PuyoPuyoTetris or TetrisDS. This is JUST Tetris.

Understand this is purely an online experience, but its maybe one of the more lonely ones you can engage in – especially considering you’re in a room with 98 other people. You can’t queue into the battle with your good-time buddies, or even have any idea who you are competing against until you either lose or take first. Thats when you can sit back and watch other people lose just a bit better than you and find out that “NoJobAge34” or “Family” passed you by. But unless you got into the top 10 its unlikely you’d wait around to find out who the champion was because you’ve already left the arena and walked into another one. The champion hears no cheers.
While it seems impossible for this to pay off to the same degree that having Tetris as a pack-in title for the original GameBoy turned out to be, this was a genius move by Nintendo to offer Tetris99 as a Free download for those subscribed to the Nintendo Online Service. It certainly pushed me into finally plunking down $20 for the yearly subscription, and I feel confident in saying if I don’t use the service for anything other than Tetris99, its been money well spent.

Final Result: 99/99 Big SCORE!

Further Reading (viewing): Theres been some other great Tetris developments in the recent months: Specifically centering around new “Classic Tetris” (NES) Champion, 16 year-old Joseph Saelee who dethroned 7 time champion Jonas Neubauer. This video of the championship match is everything you would want from Championship Match of any contest.



In even more recent Joseph Saelee news, he recently achieved a first in Classic Tetris by advancing to Level 33. The key to Joseph success is that he is extremely proficient in a new movement tactic called “hyper-tapping” where the player has to press the d-pad direction extremely quickly but with a proper rythem that allows the pieces to move at a maximum speed.
NOTE: In the video below the game doesn’t have the proper labels for Levels beyond 29, so the display gets glitched, thats why you will see some odd labels for levels 30-33.