Puyo Puyo Tetris English Version Leaked? Possibly.

Recently, an English trophy list for Puyo Puyo Tetris was leaked on the website Exophase. At first, many doubted the validity of this leak. After all, what is this "Exophase" website anyway? As time passed, though, skepticism died down, eventually leaving two logical possibilities:

• This is for an English South-East Asia release (And Sega could just release this version in the West)
• This is, in fact, for a release in the Western world.

Either way, the idea of an English release of any kind for a Puyo Puyo game has had the Puyo Puyo community going like this (in a good way):

The :AAAAAAA: emoticon from the Puyo Nexus Discord server

I, too, am feeling this emotion.

If Puyo Puyo Tetris comes out in the Western world, you should buy it as soon as possible.

Yes, this was a short post this week. I deliberately decided not to do anything special to mark the end of the year, and this pretty much came up out of nowhere. Anyway, I hope to continue posting on this blog over the course of the coming year, and I hope you will continue to follow along with my posts!

What Makes Puyo Puyo So Awesome?

I already went over the history of the series in my first post on this blog (though it should be noted that Puyo Puyo Chronicle was recently released in Japan, and both it and Puyo Tetris have been confirmed for release in Taiwan), so if you need a rundown, then go ahead and click that link. This post is not going anywhere. Today, I want to talk about what I feel the Puyo Puyo series does so well that it has become one of my favorite series.

Satisfying
Whenever you perform a chain in Puyo Puyo, your character shouts the name of one of the spells in their repertoire with each group of puyo cleared, until you end up at the point where your character uses the same spell over and over (I am not nearly good enough to reach this point). In addition to that, the amount of nuisance puyo sent over to your opponent with each group clear increases by a huge amount for each part of the chain, to the point that it can easily become overkill if your opponent does not retaliate in time. And even if your opponent DOES succeed in countering your attack, at least you will have the knowledge that it took an equally-sized chain to turn the tables on you. This creates an audio-visual feedback telling you "That chain you just did is very powerful."

Also, the animations really "pop"! I'm sorry, that was awful.

Fairness
In many competitive puzzle games, every player has different pieces. Puyo Puyo randomizes the pieces the players get, but everybody gets the same colors in the same order. Things get a bit iffy when the Fever ruleset is used, as every character has their own dropset for various kinds of pieces there (though the colors themselves remain the same for everyone), but even then, the dropset is fixed for each character (ex. two Amitie players will get the same exact pieces no matter what).

Characters
Every playable character in Puyo Puyo has a distinct personality and design and such. While this may seem like an obvious thing, victory is all the sweeter when you like the character you are playing as. It's science.

A large portion of the playable cast of 20th Anniversary. Yes, that is a bear in a lab coat in the back there.

Music
The music generally fits the cheerful tone of the series. For serious moments, the music naturally gets less cheerful, but for the most part, the music is super-cheery.


As covered above, Puyo Puyo, like most games, is awesome because of the many distinct elements present in the games. It is, however, important to note that most of the described elements are not even directly related to how the game plays. This is notable because, while the Puyo Puyo series has some pretty deep lore, ultimately a lot of people focus on the gameplay. But if you were to, say, replace all of the characters with angry foodstuffs, it just would not have the same appeal. Put more simply, presentation is important, even in a game with more of a focus on the mechanics.

A Game Designer/Tester Answers Questions

A while ago, I e-mailed a few questions to Dave Pulsoni, who works at Blue Byte in Dusseldorf, Germany. He has responded, and I will post the questions and responses here for you to read. The spelling and grammar of his answers have been cleaned up by me for better readability.



How long have you been working at Blu Byte?
Well, I started about 5 years ago, and I also do freelance work
What is it like there?
I work out of my home. I go to Düsseldorf twice a year, it’s pretty cool. There is so much American stuff and so many people speak English. It is like being home!
What do you do at Blu Byte?
I’m working on the game engine pipeline, development, extending and implementing gameplay code, and Implementing new game logic within a huge code base. Sounds glamorous, huh!
What projects have you worked on?
Specifically, in Games, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, Assassin's Creed Identity, Champions of Anteria
What are you most proud of?
Participation in development of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege
What is your favorite console generation?
Gen 6, it got me into gaming. PS2 and Xbox were my life back in the day. Halo 2, Godzilla: Save the Earth, War of the Monsters, Destroy All Humans, and other titles made me enjoy the ever living hell out of those systems. Sometimes I regret trading them in.
What does it take to work in this industry, in your opinion? 
Tenacity, creativity and most important, being part of gaming community. By that I mean playing in tournaments, being part of clubs, going to conventions, and cold calling game developers.
Where do you see the state of the industry in the coming years?
Leaps and bounds! Dude, the sky is the limit. The new gen of games will be leaps and bounds above what we have seen. Nanotechnology, virtual and augmented reality sims, cloud gaming, portability, neuro transmitters, and a host of other advancements in gaming will totally change the gamer experience.
Who inspires you? 
Shigeru Miyamoto, to me he is the most innovative and influential game designer of all time, and he created games that everyone wants to copy. He is definitely a founding father of gaming.
Any parting words?
Game on, keep the machine of creativity running so that we all can have the ultimate game created!

PSX2016 Impressions

Okay, so I'm finally talking about a current event. Earlier on the day of this writing, Sony began it's two-day PlayStation Experience Event, where it advertises hypes up various upcoming releases. Now, I'm just gonna go over some highlights of the big opening presentation.

Uncharted Except You Don't Play As A White Man
As somebody who has never really been into Uncharted, I don't care much for this announcement, but I am glad to see more of AAA gaming embrace the possibility of having non-percieved-as-default player characters.

Marvel Vs. Capcom Infinite
(Hype intensifies)

WipEout and Crash Bandicoot Remasters
I am glad to see Sony bring attention to the franchises that helped define the PlayStation with WipEout Omega Collection and Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy. These seem like complete overhauls, and I am interested to know if the remaster of Crash 1 will do anything with the nonsensical save system which only allowed you to save if you got a gem or completed a bonus stage.

The Last Guardian
It comes out next week, and I am still not even a quarter of the way done with Final Fantasy XV (From what I've heard), which came out this week. The fact that two games which have been in development for approximately a million years are releasing a week apart from each other is mind-boggling to me, personally.

Parappa The Rapper, Patapon, and LocoRoco Remasters
According to the post on the official PlayStation Blog, The connecting theme of these three games is that "They feature music in a unique way". I feel like a better connecting theme is that the latter two games used to be exclusive to the PSP, which I find interesting.

Knack is Getting a Sequel
Who asked for this? Because I don't recall anybody seriously wanting a sequel to that mediocre launch title. Who...WHY?!

Yakuza Kiwami and Yakuza 6 Announced For The West
Okay, all I really care about here is that Yakuza 6 has Puyo Puyo as a minigame. 

NieR Automata Gets A Western Launch Date
The very distant sequel to the rather divisive NieR finally has a launch date in the Western hemisphere. Personally, I loved the original, so I am excited about this.

Ys Origin PS4 Version
One of the best games in the long-running Ys series gets a PS4 version. This sounds good at first, but then I read the blog post, and the port is being done by DotEmu, infamous for not being able to do a porting job right. (Similar for Windjammers, except I have never played that game)

Indie Showcase
A lot of the indies put on display in a row seem great. I'm not a fan of Nidhogg 2's new gross-out aesthetic, though. (I'm a bit squeamish, sue me.)

Let It Die
I've gone through life when the only Suda51 game I've played was Sine Mora (Which I never finished because it sucks royally).

Closing With The Last of Us Part II
I never played the first game, somehow.

So, uh, those are my impressions. Feel free to agree or disagree in the comments, or ask my opinion on things I may not have covered.