"Panel de PokéMon!"

“Friday Old Games” is a series of articles in which we review a game from the older generations of consoles, share why we picked it, and whether or not it holds up with time.

Long before the sequel to Meteos was themed with Disney characters, a Japanese puzzle game named Panel de Pon came over to North America after being re-branded with characters from Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island and renamed Tetris Attack. Jump four years ahead and we find the game now re-re-branded with a paint job of the ever popular PokéMon series.

PokéMon Puzzle League’s base concept is the same “match three” (or more) concept we’ve seen so many times before. And like many of the other games based on the concept, it is a lot of fun to play

Rather than dropping blocks downward from the top as Tetris does, new rows of blocks will gradually come up from the bottom. It’s up to you to use your 2×1 cursor to switch the different colored blocks around in order to make a match of at least three. As soon as a match is made, you won’t be able to add more to it. Instead, you’ll have to plan ahead to pull off large matches.

All blocks are 1×1 squares and obey the laws of gravity. You can move blocks out of tall stacks and have them fall down to where you need them and even set up large chains of combos which can rack up your score. If the blocks stack too high and reach the top, it’s Game Over. Inversely, if you’re doing so well that you run out of blocks to work with, you can speed up the rate that rows come up from the bottom.

"Clearly this is a PokéMon game."

PokéMon Puzzle League has a decent number of modes. You can play the “story” in which you fight the various gym leaders in a Vs. CPU battle. There’s an endless mode where you play until you lose. And the puzzle mode gives you a limited number of moves to clear every block on screen.

The game is the most fun when played with a friend. Even multiplayer has a lot of options and modes. You can battle to the death, sending deadly extra blocks to your opponent with your combos, or you can compete purely for score without affecting each other’s playing field. There’s also a strange mode where you try to get a block down past a line before the other player. You can adjust speed settings on a per player basis, so people of all skill levels can compete with each other.

The coolest feature in PokéMon Puzzle League, which was not in any of the previous Panel de Pon clones, is 3D Mode. In 3D mode, the rectangular playing field becomes a cylinder, allowing the left and right sides to wrap. Having to pay attention to how high your stacks of blocks are in a 3D space is daunting at first, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll never want to go back to 2D mode.

While the actual PokéMon theme the game has is largely unnecessary, it’s both nostalgic and hilarious (or if you were never into PokéMon, just the latter). Much of the game’s music is made up of MIDI remixes of the theme song to the TV show. Racking up combos makes both the trainers and their PokéMon shout out hilarious clips including James’ (Team Rocket)  incredibly flamboyant, “I feel giddy!”.

"How many puzzle games have a fully animated cartoon intro?"

Why did I pick this game?

While I missed out on PokéMon Puzzle League in its day, I had always heard it was a really solid title, despite its odd choice of theme. Also, I was a pretty big fan of the PokéMon series back in the days of the original 151. I had been meaning to try this for quite some time.

How does it hold up with time?

Like many other games in the puzzle genre, time has very little negative effect on PokéMon Puzzle League. Even today, it’s a fantastic puzzle game. The addition of 3D mode sets it apart from the games it is based on and makes for a very satisfying experience in both single-player and multiplayer.

Thankfully, the game is currently available on Virtual Console so you won’t need to go hunting for your Nintendo 64. It’s definitely worth the ten dollar price tag if you’re fond of the genre. You’re guaranteed both crazy-fun gameplay and hilarity. What more could you ask for?