Puyo Puyo Tetris came about when Sega looked at their Puyo Puyo franchise and thought "How can we mix it up?". The result? It's mixed alright! It's a shaken and stirred puzzle cocktail that has few enemies. Sega themselves were in the line of releasing their Tetris game on the Mega Drive back in the day when ELORG were holding the Tetris Licences. However, Nintendo beat them to it, causing their Tetris game to become unlicensed, with very few copies released in the wild. Now that Sega have been awarded the Tetris licence, they've decided to take the game into their own hands, and the 16-bit Tetris theme is no longer bound to the gaming tidbit anomaly known simply as the 8-bit Flash Columns music.

As the name implies, Puyo Puyo Tetris is a Crossover Action Puzzle Game that mixes together Puyo Puyo and Tetris, which are the two biggest puzzle games in Japan. Understandably, Puyo Puyo hasn't had the same level of success and cult following in the West as it has in its native Japan, while Tetris on the other hand is an entirely different story altogether, with many of the older guard starting their Tetris-playing days on either the NES or Game Boy.

As a game concept, it seems a little odd that two completely different puzzle games, with two completely different rules, engines, physics and pastimes, could go hand-in-hand in such a way where, just on the principles of fun at least, it delivers so much in spades that it's genre-defining for the puzzle addicts, yet on a serious note, doesn't detract from the hardcore enthusiasts that want a pure, unadulterated gaming experience, and I'm happy to confirm that Puyo Puyo Tetris does just that whilst keeping the game as fresh, current, and yet so refreshingly original as required.

The Puyo Puyo side of things is based on the Arcade classic Puyo Puyo 2, and is true to that game in every way. You play on a 6x12 grid, with the 13th row hidden above the grid threshold; You can double-rotate your Puyos if you're stuck in one column; You can perform the vanishing trick, and you can counter opposing garbage with your own chains. The Tetris side of things is based on Modern Tetris, where you can instantly drop the active piece by pressing up; Hold your active piece and subsequently substitute that held piece with another active piece; The Super Rotation System is in place (which in layman's terms means you can T-Spin); The active combo (or REN) meter features, and you can counter opposing garbage with your own lines.

The game itself features a comical story known as Adventure Mode where Tetris Characters find themselves sucked into the Puyo world. The main protagonist is T, a young male lead that's refreshingly different in the context of a Puyo game (as all games in the main series feature female protagonists), alongside other Tetris characters (whom are all named after Tetris pieces). With the help of Ringo and the other Puyo protagonists, they try to return to their own dimension. Randomness ensues, like any good, comical, nonsensical Japanese game would, whereby you play against COM opponents in the five main game modes, plus set challenges. Similarly, a 'Puzzle League' tab (which isn't to be confused by the Puzzle League series of games made by Nintendo, known in Japan as Panel de Pon) allows players to play single-player modes such as Endless Puyo Puyo, Endless Fever, Endless Mini Puyo, Tetris Marathon, Tetris 40-Line Sprint, and Tetris Ultra Sprint.

The five main game modes that feature in Puyo Puyo Tetris are as follows:

1. VS - This game mode allows you to play a normal VS game. You can choose to play either Puyo Puyo or Tetris, and you can, as the name suggests, do a Puyo Puyo Tetris Crossover battle.

2. PuyoTetMix - Played on a Tetris grid, each player has a piece set that contains both Puyos and Tetriminoes. A Tetrimino will always fall to the bottom of the grid, whereas Puyos stack up. Chains and Lines send garbage to the opponent.

3. Party - Played in Puyo and/or Tetris modes, it's a time attack mode where the most points wins. Items appear on the grid, which activate whenever a line or puyos clear alongside them.

4. Big Bang - Played in Puyo and/or Tetris modes, it's a time attack mode where the biggest chain or combo wins. At the end of a given time slot, the total garbage accrued from either Endless Fever (Puyo) or Lucky Attack (Tetris) is calculated, and whoever sends the most garbage damages a health meter below the opponent's grid. When that meter runs out, that player is out.

5. Swap - A pure Puyo Puyo and Tetris game where the game decides whether to start in Puyo Puyo or Tetris modes. After 25 seconds of active play in one mode, the grids swap out to the other mode, and this is repeated until the game is decided.

My personal favourite is Swap mode, as it brings a new level of competition to the fore, and is a lot of fun to play overall. While I personally don't like Party or PuyoTetMix modes, I do appreciate how they offer a different level of fun and competition among the more experimental players.

The graphics are very nice and clean, and while the 3D doesn't really offer all that much in the 3DS version, it doesn't detract, nor distract, from the game's pure appearance. The soundtrack is also very good, with a variety of new music to go alongside the tried and tested music found in earlier Puyo games. The arrangement of the Tetris staple theme we all know and love has a Tango-element to it, is arranged in E minor as opposed to A minor, but doesn't feature the choral bridge as heard in other versions (such as the Game Boy version).

Internet play is also very prominent and very nicely handled, even if it does lag across long distances. You can choose your player avatar in the Options menu, check your ranking online, as well as play both randomly and with friends. You can choose which of the five modes to play by toggling them 'ON' or 'OFF', though by default all five modes are 'ON'. Also, because the games' online play is bound to their native networks, owners of the 3DS and Wii U versions can play against each other cross-platform via the Nintendo Network, as can Vita and PS3 owners over PSN. The game also features DLC, which for the moment include side quests and additional music, neither of which are fundamental to the game itself, so are purely optional, with prices starting from 100 yen a spin.

However, despite the good, there are apparent drawbacks to Puyo Puyo Tetris. The game itself is hugely imbalanced, and can lead to two sets of extremes. Because of the improvements and refinements Tetris has had over the years, a Tetris Pro can set up crazy comboes in seconds, long before any of the Puyo Elite have had a chance to set up a 12 chain or more. The issue here lies with the Hard Drop function, which only ever existed in Puyo as late as Puyo Puyo 7, which was released in 2009! As such, Crossover VS battles against two players of similar skill in Puyo and Tetris will favour the Tetris player at least three out of four battles at a time. Also, the game does suffer from a drop in framerate at critical times, which is an absolute no-no in a genre where framerate and precision matters most. Unfortunately, with these two issues surrounding the game, Sega have not entirely addressed the balance. Instead, the majority of hardcore play will likely be in single-mode VS battles, which will either be Puyo vs Puyo or Tetris vs Tetris, which defeats the crossover purpose. However, Swap mode does address this balance in 25-second chunks, and eventually, the best Puyo players will be able to rival the best Tetris players in their own game, and the same vice-versa.


Content: 7
Gameplay: 9
Graphics: 9
Audio: 9
Total: 34/40 (85%)


Overall, it is a spin-off of two main game series that come together and, even with the drawbacks, does a great job in unifying two very different puzzle games, as well as garnering exposure from one code to the other across both paradigms. Whether or not the Tetris Company Licence allows Sega to release the game outside of Japan will be consigned to conjecture and theory, it would be a crying shame for the game to be denied a worldwide release across all four of its platforms. It garnered much interest and hype in Japan and certainly hasn't disappointed. If you like one game code but haven't tried the other, or are a bonafide fan of both, it's certainly worth the investment. Who knows, perhaps it may get the worldwide release it so rightfully deserves, as it has the strength, the key elements, and the core foundation to remain as relevant and as fun in today's worldwide market as it does in its native homeland of Japan.