Coin Puzzle
Moujiya
| Release Date: |
11/11/1996 |
 |
| Number of Discs: |
1 |
| Packaging: |
Standard Case |
| Number of Players: |
1-2 |
| Simultaneous Players: |
1-2 |
| Languages: |
Japanese |
| Controllers: |
Standard Pad |
| License: |
Commercial |
| Publisher: |
Virgin Interactive
Entertainment |
| Developers: |
ETONA/FWS |
| Genre: |
Puzzle |
|
Trivia/Notes |
|
The original Japanese title
for this game is Ryougae Puzzle Moujiya.
The original arcade version was developed by FPS.
Works perfectly with the ST-Key cartridge. |
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Screenshots |
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Review |
| By:
Yart |
Coin Puzzle Moujiya is a
little obscure title that not many people know about. At
first glance it resembles a very cute kitty cat themed
Puyo Puyo or Tetris clone, but deep down under the
generic looking puzzle game lies a very complex and well
thought out title that even requires a lot of
memorization if you want to get anywhere past the game's
second match.
If you played or seen Tetris, or Puyo Puyo, you know
what I'm talking about when it comes down to the general
gameplay of this title. You have a narrow and tall
playzone in which you drop down pieces of varying shapes
and colours and you have to match them up a certain way
to eliminate them to make room for more. If you end up
filling the pieces up to the top of your playfield where
the next piece cannot fit onto the screen anymore, the
game is over for you, and your opponent is the winner.
If your opponent fills his/her screen, the same thing
happens only vice versa.
However, while the general idea of the typical puzzle
game is there, there are a few things you'll notice
(besides the cute kittens) when you first start playing
this game. First of all, the pieces you drop down your
playfield are coins, and each colour coin represents a
different value. For example, lets just make up a
currency to help explain how the matching and
eliminating system works and call our new made up
currency Cakes (everyone loves Cakes). Lets say a 5
Cakes coin is called a Nickle, and a 10 Cakes coin is
called a Dime. Now lets say you wanted to add two
Nickles, which would be 5 + 5 Cakes (which equals 10 in
case you failed math). Instead of having a bunch of
loose change in your pocket, you could simply exchange
those two coins for one Dime, which is also the
equivalent of 10 Cakes, but you take up less room in
your pocket. That's exactly how this game works. Instead
of eliminating coins in your playfield, you exchange
them for a higher valued coin to save you room for more
until someone finally loses control and fills their
playfield.
That's where the memory part comes in. Every colour when
matched with other coins of the same colour create a new
coin of another colour as the final output. Unless you
know the Japanese currency of Yen, you'll have to play
this game quite a few times to know what colours make
what. Not only that, but it isn't always "four in a row
gets rid of them all!" but it varies with colour. Blue
for example takes five in a row to make a yellow, but
only two yellows in a row make a red. Five reds in a row
are needed to make a green, while only two greens make a
pink. Finally five pinks make a purple, and two purples
eliminates them off your playfield. Although, purple is
a very rare colour to come by and you pretty much need
to make them by matching pink coins as they just won't
fall on their own. May not sound like much, but when you
play against a very unforgivable AI, you have to access
your brain not at the speed of a hard drive, but more so
the speed of a RAM drive. (That's geek talk for "You
have to think fast!")
Another feature is the "bomb" feature commonly found in
most manic-shooter games, so it's a little odd to see in
a puzzle game like this. You get one "bomb" (not the
official name for it by the way) every match, and if you
use it at the right time you can save yourself and
completely turn the match in your favour. If you start
chaining coins like crazy, you'll send cat heads to fill
your opponent's playfield (as he will do to you) that
you can only eliminate by matching coins beside the
heads. May not sound unique, but what the "bomb" does is
summons a rather badly scaled sprite of a dog's head
onto your playfield and it eats all the cat heads,
allowing not only for you to place pieces on the field
again, but also drops pieces built previously on top of
the cat heads allowing for strategic placement before
allowing them to drop to max out your chaining, royally
screwing your opponent. However, use it at the wrong
time and you can screw yourself badly as the "bomb" has
a casting time, and while it's eliminating the cat heads
on your playfield, your opponent has about 5 seconds to
rack up even more chains and to send even more heads for
when your "bomb" is done clearing your field, finishing
you off.
Of course, if competition isn't your thing, there's a
"survival mode" (again, not the official name as I
cannot speak or read Japanese) where you play alone and
see how long you can last. The catch is that the game
speeds up and slows down only once. It eventually gets
to the point where you don't even see the pieces
dropping anymore and they're instantly at the bottom,
giving you only the half a second to think after the
piece touches down and the next piece is loading into
the top of the playfield.
Another thing about the gameplay is that you get a
little bar the shape of a cat at the bottom of the
screen that fills up, and when that reaches full, a
white cat head piece comes down and whatever colour it
lands on, it will advance every coin of that colour to
the next colour as if you matched them all up. Very
helpful for when you're trapped near the top, and the
piece comes, allowing you to chain yourself out of a
mess. It's an element of luck that adds unpredictability
to the mix, as well as excitement.
One final thing of note about the gameplay is that if
your piece touches the top of another piece, the bottom
of the playfield, or is one piece below a wall of
pieces, you can tap rotate really quickly to keep the
piece active for a few extra seconds instead of it
touching down, and if done correctly, can even allow you
to climb low walls and to land on the other side!
Normally puzzle games are very unforgiving and if you're
one pixel under another block, there's no chance the
piece that's going down can move to the other side.
Now that we got the gameplay out of the way, being a
port of an arcade game the graphics, while colourful,
aren't the best on the Saturn. Sure, they're appealing,
but they look and feel like they belong on the Super
Nintendo. Animations consist of two frames for each
animation. However, if you can look aside from the
actual graphical quality and look outside the box, the
characters themselves are very well drawn, as well as
very amusing to watch. Some of their expressions when
they chain a combo or have a combo chained against them
are priceless. Plus, since all the characters in the
game are cartoon style cats, you get some really silly
ones that you have to take on. Examples are an old man
who throws coffee at his playfield in anger, or the poor
cat who has a lot of straw tied up to him due to the
lack of clothing. Unfortunately I wish I could praise
the actual gameplay side of the graphics as well. The
colours of the coins sometimes look alike, especially
the pink and purple coins. Sometimes you mistake a
certain coloured coin for another and place one down on
top of it only to realize that you just screwed yourself
and lost the match. Once you get used to it though, you
mainly only have trouble with the pink and purple coins,
and sometimes yellow and green.
The music is nice for the theme of the game despite the
fact that the quality is pretty low, and on top of that,
the music sounds very MIDI'ish. It sounds like someone
got lazy and put a recorder to the arcade cabinet,
recorded the music and slapped it into the game as CD
Audio. What you can expect is a light hearted soundtrack
to fit a light hearted game. The music is in place
though, and sometimes you may find yourself humming
along with the tune. Unfortunately, where this
department hurts the most is in soundtrack's variety.
Sure there's an intro tune, and a couple various ones
such as some option screen tunes and the tutorial screen
tune, every level in the game shares the same track,
with the final match as the exception. It can get tiring
quickly, making you reach for the mute button on your TV
remote until you finally beat the final match and are
awarded with the ending credits.
The sound effects fit the game fine. They're in place,
but not really noticeable. Thankfully the sound effects
don't detract from the game at all. The voice samples
are, again, low quality just like the music, but it's
funny to hear some of the characters go nuts when
they're losing, even if you can't understand the game's
native language.
This game has a storyline believe it or not, but not one
I can understand by text alone since again, the language
barrier really hinders my ability to fully understand
this game. Fortunately everything is illustrated as well
as the ending sequence of the game, so I'll try to come
up with what I 'think' the story is for this game. Some
evil cat dude stole some money from a bank and you're
some other cat dude who has to get the money back. You
beat the bad cat dude and everyone goes "YAY!" and
throws you up in the air. The end.
The main disappointing aspect of this port is that it
offers almost nothing new from the arcade. There's no
new game modes, or any new content at all. Normally, if
an arcade game is ported to a system, there's often
times something a little extra added in to help the game
last longer instead of a twenty-five cent visit to the
mall. Look at the bright side though, at least they
didn't decide that the game shouldn't play like it's
arcade counterpart. The addictiveness of being an arcade
game is still there, which is a good thing.
Overall, this game is an interesting puzzle game if you
dig deep into it. For someone who wants something quick
and simple, stick with Puyo Puyo or Tetris. For someone
who wants to try something new and innovative that
expands on an already great game genre, you owe it to
yourself to at least give this game one try. |
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Breakdown |
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Gameplay: |
9/10
The controls are simple,
forgiving, and the button placement is perfect. Only
three buttons are used. The game itself is also very
challenging. Hard to get any better for a puzzle game. |
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Graphics: |
6/10
While they feel cheap, there
is a certain appeal to them that do make them pleasing
to look at. |
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Sound: |
6/10
Nice music, but repetitive
and low quality. You won't even notice the sound
effects. Character voices are sometimes funny. |
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Longetivety: |
4/10
The lack of content hurts
the replayability, but nonetheless it does have a
certain addictive quality about it. |
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Originality: |
8/10
A Tetris clone is a Tetris
clone, but what these guys made out of a Tetris clone
really refreshed the genre. Perfect example of taking
something good and making it great. |
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Overall: |
7/10 |
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