The late 80s were a very good time for puzzle games of all kinds. Half-forgotten BASIC games like MaxIt were dug out again, and arcade machine vendors tried hard to invent new ones. One such example is Tamtex' Shisen-Sho, another is Taito's Puzznic, released in 1989.

Gameplay

While Shisen-Sho tried to capitalize on the success of solitaire MahJongg games, Puzznic combined elements of Columns and Soko-Ban. You can push the blocks around, but only horizontally. They are subject to gravity. Two or more blocks with the same symbol will vanish when they come into contact. Goal is to clear each level completely. This is especially tricky if there are three of a type, since you have to make them all come into contact at the same time.

Home Platform Conversions

In 1990, Puzznic was ported to most of the platforms of the day, Japanese and foreign. The ports were done by different companies and are therefore of different quality. One of the best ports, surprisingly, is for the Amstrad CPC. The Atari ST graphics, on the other hand, are among the worst.

The original arcade machine rewarded the player with erotic pictures. Most home platform ports omitted this completely, PC-98 (see above), PC Engine, and X68000 offered some cute but fully dressed anime girls, only the FM Towns version had exactly the same graphics as the coin-op.

Clones and Spin-Offs

• Cultivation (8-bit Atari): A faithful clone by Kemal Ezcan, featuring hi-res monochrome graphics and digitized sounds.
• Brix (DOS): A fairly faithful clone of the Amiga version of Puzznic, created by German student Michael Riedel when he was bored and wanted to practise VGA programming.
• Brix I (DOS): An enhanced version of Brix with original puzzles.
• Th!nk Cross (Amiga/DOS/C64): Unlike Brix a commercial product that differs from Puzznic in graphics and puzzles. It is also a lot less fun to play than Brix.

Links

• The Puzznic Story
• Puzznic Arcade Screenshots