Puyo Puyo

About Puyo Puyo

Puyo Puyo (1991) is Compile's falling-blob puzzle game starring the characters of Madō Monogatari, which Sega's arcade version turned into a competitive hit and the West first played as Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine and Kirby's Avalanche.

Puyo Puyo in Depth

Players match coloured blobs called puyos to clear them, and chains of clears sends garbage into the opponent's grid, with the aim of filling it up. Compile's founder Masamitsu "Moo" Niitani produced the game, inspired by elements of Tetris and Dr. Mario, and it borrows its characters from Compile's 1990 role-playing game Madō Monogatari. The game has Single, Double and Endless modes. In Single mode, the player is Arle Nadja, a 16-year-old spellcaster who must beat 12 opponents, most of them just out for mischief, before facing the Dark Prince, who wants to take over the world. Double mode is a head-to-head contest between two players, and Endless mode is a chase for the highest score. A Mission mode sets 52 puzzles to clear with limited pieces.

Because sending so much garbage made matches short, Compile added "offsetting" from Puyo Puyo 2 onward, letting players cancel incoming garbage with chains of their own.

Making Puyo Puyo

Compile released Puyo Puyo for the MSX2 in 1991, with Tokuma Shoten's Famicom Disk System version the same day. A year later Sega's arcade version greatly expanded it, and Game Machine listed it as Japan's fifth most successful table arcade unit of December 1992. Sega's Mega Drive version, released in Japan on 18 December 1992, was a best seller there for four months. Ports followed on the Game Gear, PC-9801, Famicom, Super Famicom as Super Puyo Puyo, Game Boy, PC Engine CD and FM Towns. In the West the Genesis version became Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine in 1993, with characters from the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon, and two years later the SNES version appeared as Kirby's Avalanche in North America and Kirby's Ghost Trap in Europe. The series later reached the West under the name Puyo Pop, and the arcade original was re-released on Switch as Sega Ages Puyo Puyo in 2019.