I first discovered Super Puzzle Fighter back in 2009 or so, and it was by mistake in a way. I had picked up a cheap Game Boy Advance, and just was grabbing all these cheap cartridges as Gamestop was clearancing them out to make room to newer DS titles. I've always been a big fan of puzzle games, and so it seemed like something worth looking into – a puzzle game based on Street Fighter, huh?
The full title of the game is silly. There was never any "Puzzle Fighter I," so this isn't the sequel to anything. Instead, it's sort of a self-deprecating joke at Capcom's tendency to repackage Street Fighter II so many times. I mean, how many versions were released for the SNES alone? Anyway, what I learned back then was that Puzzle Fighter is awesome. On the surface, it's actually a bit of a Puyo Puyo clone. But that's fine. Because Puyo Puyo is also awesome. Yet, Puzzle Figher does enough unique things that it feels like its own very specific game. And over the years, I've played (I think) every single port of the game. And I'd go on record to say that it's one of my favorite puzzle games of all time. It's not Tetris, but it is way up there on my ranking. The idea is somewhat simple. It's a two-player competitive puzzle game. Gems drop from the ceiling in pieces of two. Your goal is to match them up, and create bigger gems. You can make them 2x2, or 3x3, or 4x4. But you can also make them 2x3 or 2x4 and so on. The bigger them gems are when you burst them via glowing burst gems, the more garbage blocks you dump on your opponent. But here's where things get interesting. Each of the 8+ playable characters have different patterns of garbage blocks to attack with. This means that learning your character AND opponent characters is just as important as in a fighting game. And thus, a genius game is born. Where I sit now in 2022, I'm playing the Xbox 360 HD port of the game on my Series X. I'm also streaming it to my Surface Pro X because I'm kind of a weird dude. But that's how I roll. I like playing my games streamed on the couch while my wife is either reading (and I'm listening to The Office or Seinfeld or whatever) or she's watching some kind of true crime show in the background. The X360 port is one I've owned since back when it was originally released. Thank goodness for Xbox backwards compatibility! This port is a bit of a mixed bag, but overall I like it. I mean, my other option on Xbox is to grab it as part of a recent Capcom collection. That one has online play, but is basically just the arcade game. This HD version is, well, an HD version which looks pretty good. It also adds in a few other modes. X Mode is the original arcade version, so there's not a whole lot to say there. X' Mode is the new version of the game for this port. It's basically the original arcade game, but it's been rebalanced for competitive play it modern times. What this means is simply that gamers who've been playing this one competitively for years have figured out certain tricks to manipulate things in their favor, and some of that has been addressed. For most of us, we won't notice a whole lot of changes. But they are there. Some tweaks to how the burst gems accrue points; some tweaks to garbage block patterns, and so on. I don't know that I could put my finger on it exactly, but having played the arcade version many times, X' Mode does actually feel more balanced in some ineffable way to me. Y Mode turns the game into Columns basically, and I don't care for it. It's not why I play Puzzle Fighter. Meanwhile, Z Mode is basically Panel De Pon, and again, I don't care for it because I'm not really a fan of Panel De Pon. Apparently both of these modes have been present in most versions of the game since the Dreamcast release. I played that one back in the day, too and I don't remember because I really just want to play straight-up Puzzle Fighter and not some other mode. The one mode that this port – and most ports - of the game is missing is Street Challenge Mode. That was present in the GBA port, and was one of the reasons to still play that one. Basically, every character has a list of challenges to complete, and doing so will unlock new things. Honestly, the unlocks are nothing special, but it's so much fun to have a list of objectives to knock off in this game. I wish that Street Challenge Mode would have been brought over to modern consoles. Anyway, I've been playing Puzzle Fighter for well over a decade now. Like I said, I've played most every version of it. And y'know what? I Still love it. It never really gets old to me. I spent the last few nights playing through X' Mode with multiple characters and on every difficulty mode with the intention of 1CCing them all. And it was a blast. I love this game a lot.
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