puyo-puyo posts (Subscribe to this feed)

Looks like the Project RINGO mystery is solved. The latest issue of Japanese mag Famitsu (via 1UP) reveals a brand new Puyo Puyo game for Nintendo DS, Wii and PSP. The Puyo Puyo series (known as Puyo Pop in the States) is a puzzle game where players must move falling colored pieces to match four like colors together.

Nintendo DS will be the first to receive Puyo Puyo 7, with a Japanese release on July 30th. Both Wii and PSP versions are scheduled for release in Winter. In addition to new online gameplay, the latest iteration of the Sega puzzler will also feature a new "transformation mode," which allows players to deflect enemy attacks and chain larger combos. We're certain Sega will highlight gameplay footage when the Project RINGO site goes live on April 3rd.

The DS found itself back in cozy old third place in this week's chart, as the hype from Metal Gear Solid 4 died down a bit in Japan:

• PSP: 59,531 (5,325)
  
• Wii: 41,037 (4,527)
• NDS: 36,599 (2,602)
• PS3: 20,336 (54,975)
• PS2: 6,346 (951)
• Xbox 360: 2,555 (392)

Meanwhile, Let's Make a Pro Baseball Team's steady climb back into the top ten makes us wonder if supply just wasn't meeting demand a few weeks earlier, when the game fell out of the top thirty.

Yet overall, the DS had a relatively boring week in terms of software, with no exciting new releases to congratulate or poke fun at (unless you consider the budget-priced re-release of Puyo Puyo 15th Anniversary "exciting" and "new").

If you want to see what Japanese gamers were buying last week, though, just click on past the break.

We were already totally pumped about getting Cho Aniki on the European and Aussie Virtual Consoles, but our faces lit up when we saw what else was lying in store for us this morning. Metal Slug is the first Neo Geo game to appear on the download service since December 14th, but what a comeback!

From a value-for-money perspective, we'd still recommend picking up Metal Slug Anthology (especially now that it's so cheap), but it's great to see SNK's classic series represented on the VC (and this version even has Classic Controller support). Puyo Puyo 2 and TurboGrafx billiards title Break In complete this week's line-up.

• Cho Aniki -- TurboGrafx-16 -- 900 Wii Points
• Metal Slug -- Neo Geo -- 900 Wii Points
• Break In -- TurboGrafx-16 -- 700 Wii Points
• Puyo Puyo 2 -- Mega Drive -- 900 Wii Points

Hop in your Slug and blast your way past the break to see all four in action!

If there's one complaint we have for the first Puyo Puyo game on the DS that Atlus brought to North America, it's that it lacks Wi-Fi Connection compatibility. But, that's understandable, seeing as how the game released before the service launched on the handheld. It looks like Sega is fixing that this time around, however.

The latest Puyo Puyo game on the DS is due out in Japan on June 19th and will feature full Wi-Fi play. It will also feature the weird board mechanics that the last Puyo game did. We would hold off on importing this one for now, unless you're some kind of Puyo Puyo junkie that spends your days and night grouping together similarly-colored objects in the hopes that they will erase themselves from existence.

Atlus' long history of niche import localizations has extended to nearly every genre under the sun, from turn-based strategy and role-playing to games like Cubivore that simply defy convention altogether. Now, however, it appears that the publisher is looking to carve out its own slice of the growing casual games space, as Atlus USA has inked an agreement to distribute Idea Factory's multiplayer "family friendly" puzzle game Octomania for the Wii in North America.

The cephalopod-centric game was developed under the watchful eye of Puyo Puyo mastermind Moo Niitani, and promises addictive color-matching gameplay not all that dissimilar from Compile's classic puzzler. Even better, the title boasts multiplayer gameplay, both locally and online, though given the game's March 11 release chances are the lion's share of Wii owners will be too busy playing a certain other game to give Octomania the time of day.

The internet has made it easy to find cheats for games, but we miss the tips pages from game magazines, when the discovery of a new code could inspire you to go back to an old game. These codes aren't exactly new, but oldness is the essence of the Virtual Console! We're bringing back the classic codes every week on The VC Advantage.

Puyo Puyo, Compile's series of falling-blob puzzle games, currently has two iterations on the American Virtual Console. Neither of these games contain the words "Puyo" or "Puyo" in their titles. But Kirby's Avalanche and Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine are Puyo through and through(yo). Which automatically means that they're cute and enjoyable Tetris/Columns-esque puzzle games. And (insert segue here) here are some codes for them.

Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine (GEN)
Skip to the final boss: Yes, it's weird that a puzzle game like this has level passwords. It's even weirder for it to have bosses. Should you want to experience the weirdness for yourself, you can take advantage of the fact that level passwords are delightfully easy to share on the Internet -- much more so than, say, save files. To access the final boss, enter the following password: for easy mode, enter Yellow, Has, Blue, Blue. For normal, enter Purple, Yellow, Has, Clear. Hard: Has, Clear, Purple, Has. Hardest: Red, Red, Clear, Yellow.

Kirby's Avalanche (SNES)
Custom options menu: Hold down all four face buttons on controller 2 during gameplay, then reset the game. Go into the options menu and more options will appear, including level select and a sound test. We cannot guarantee the utility of this code; in fact, it's a bit of a research interest for us. Does the soft reset of the Virtual Console work like a real reset? If this code works, it does!

[Codes via GameFAQs]