Pokemon Puzzle League

The Short


Pros
- Apes the Tetris Attack formula perfectly, creating an addicting experience
- Lots of options, people to battle, and puzzles to...puzzle.
- Basically this is Tetris Attack with a Pokemon skin. Hard to say much else about it.

Cons
- Only two players (instead of four)
- Voices of characters from the anime are extremely obnoxious
- Not much here that hadn't already been brought out in Tetris Attack back on the SNES

Get ready for some puzzles in a league of their own!

The Long

Tetris Attack is a pretty good game. I first played it on its Japanese iteration Panel de Pon, on a Virgin Atlantic flight to and from London. They had SNES's installed in the seats (yeah!) and for some reason had this Japanese game on it. It was a 12 hour flight, and I'm pretty sure I played it almost the entire duration. It was that addicting.

The US version (Tetris Attack) replaced the underaged fairy girls (oh, Japan) from Panel de Pon with Yoshi and other Mario characters, which isn't too surprising. Then, when 2000 rolled around and the N64 and Pokemon where hot topics, they released a skinned version of the game for the N64. Thus, Pokemon Puzzle League came into existence. 

Ash has that expression every time he earns a badge. I first thought it was stupid, now it's weirdly hilarious. 

I should probably have reviewed Tetris Attack before this one, but it's too late now, so whatever. Tetris Attack...er...Pokemon Puzzle League is a fairly simple puzzle game. You are given a grid filled with colored blocks, and you can switch two at a time horizontally (as many times as you want). Your goal is to get sets of three (or more) to clear out space. If your blocks reach the top, you are done. Pretty easy.

One of the big differences between Tetris Attack and Pokemon Puzzle League is that in Tetris Attack's main single player mode your goal was to simply clear down to a line. As you progressed the blocks would keep coming up, and after a while a line would appear and if you got rid of all the blocks above that line you won.

Not so in Pokemon Puzzle League. Here you are battling your way through the original gym leaders of Pokemon Red/Blue in an attempt to be the pokemon master. Which makes sense I guess, but I'm sad to see that other mode isn't the main attraction this time, as having a single player that's primarily competitive in a puzzle game is a bit...weird.

This isn't the Pokemon I'm used to. 

So how do you battle? Well first you pick a pokemon (and which one you pick seems to have no effect on how the game goes, elemental weaknesses or otherwise) and then you start swapping blocks. If you get four or more in a row or make combos, you'll drop big blocks on your enemies. They then have to make matches near these big solid blocks (something like 2x4 or bigger, etc.) and then they'll turn into regular colored blocks and can be erased by puzzling. That's it. It's pretty simple, and all that really changes is the speed increases until the end. Failing can be based both on skill and luck, with luck being the key factor in the end levels. 

It also has two player multiplayer, but for some reason they didn't add four player multiplayer (which, honestly, was the reason I got this game even though I already owned Tetris Attack. I should wiki these games before I buy them for very specific feature inclusions). Dr. Mario 64 added four player multiplayer just fine; what gives? Without it, there isn't any fundamental improvement over Tetris Attack, because Tetris Attack had a VS mode too. There are no bonus features here at all, aside from the Pokemon skin.

Oh, and speaking of that...

There's that face again. 

Every time anybody talks in the game I want to punch them. Tetris Attack had a few voice clips, but most were just "Stop!" if you stopped the timer or a "Yeah!" when you won. In this game, people won't shut up. It's like they realized the N64 had more space on the cartridge, so they crammed all the voices from the anime. If you or an enemy make any match, expect them to shout one of three canned phrases. And since you only play as Ash, you'll hear all his lines after about the second battle. Considering their voice acting isn't exactly...good, this is really, really, really annoying. 

"RAWR I'M ASH RAWR LOOK AT THAT HEART RAWR"

The graphics also haven't seen much of an upgrade. Honestly I think it looks worse, and I like Pokemon. It's muddy (like all N64 games) but they don't use any of the power to add new effects or change things up or anything. Even the backgrounds are more soulless, mostly just showing the same generic Pokemon arena, while in Tetris Attack the backgrounds were bright and colorful. It's a step down, to be sure.

"RRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWRRRRRRR"

It still works as a game, because the core formula is so extremely strong. There's a reason I played it for 12 hours nonstop (and not just because I was trapped in a plane and my GBA SP's battery died). It's a puzzle game that's extremely easy to pick up but gets difficult very quickly, making it perfect for when you have a few hours to burn. 

However, if you really want to play this type of game, I'd suggest any version aside from this one. Or you could turn the volume off on your TV, which would fix 90% of the problems. Yeah, you should just do that. 

I still like this game, but since this N64 version has literally no improvements over Tetris Attack on the SNES (and only takes things away in terms of awful Ash Ketchum voice screeching at me constantly), I'll probably just always play Tetris Attack instead. AS SHOULD YOU.

Three out of five screaming Ash faces. 

"I WILL EAT YOUR SOULS."

RAWR