Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, released in Japan as Super Puzzle Fighter II X (スーパーパズルファイターII X) and commonly referred to as Puzzle Fighter, is a one or two player puzzle game first released in the spring of 1996 by Capcom on the CPS II arcade system. The game's title is a parody of Super Street Fighter II Turbo (or Super Street Fighter II X in Japan), with music and interface elements spoofing the Street Fighter Alpha and Darkstalkers games.
An HD version titled Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, is available for purchase on Xbox Live Arcade and the PSN Store.
Gameplay
Puzzle Fighter is a puzzle game which is inspired by the Capcom arcade game Pnickies and Sega arcade game Baku Baku Animal.[citation needed] As in that game, the player controls pairs of blocks ("gems" in game parlance) that drop into a pit-like playfield (twelve blocks tall by six blocks wide, with the fourth column from the left being thirteen blocks high). In Puzzle Fighter, however, gems can only be eliminated by coming into contact with a Crash Gem of the same color, which eliminates all adjacent gems of that color, setting up the potential for huge chain reactions. As gems are eliminated, "garbage blocks" called Counter Gems will drop into the opponent's playfield; these will eventually become normal gems, but only after they count down to zero (most Counter Gems start at "5" and are reduced by one each time a new pair of gems is dropped on that board), and until that time they cannot be eliminated by normal means. (The only way to eliminate Counter Gems before they become normal gems is to place a Crash Gem of that color nearby so it eliminates at least one normal gem. If this is done, all Counter Gems immediately adjacent to the Crash Gem will be taken out as well). Additionally, gems of the same color that form squares or rectangles (of at least two blocks tall and wide) in the pit become a giant Power Gem of that size and color; eliminating these as part of a combo increases the number of Counter Gems that would otherwise normally appear on the opponent's board. The only other type of piece to appear is a diamond, which eliminates all the gems—normal, Power, Counter, and Crash alike—of whichever color gem it lands on. (This, too, will cause Counter Gems to appear on the opponent's board. The diamond is supposed to create half the number of Counter Gems as a normal chain reaction. However, there is a bug that allows players to bypass this reduction.[1]). The diamond piece appears every 25 pieces.
During the game, super deformed versions of various characters from Capcom's two main fighting game series (Street Fighter and Darkstalkers), will act out a comical battle based on how the game is going. Every time one player sends Counter Gems to his or her opponent, his or her character will perform a typical fighting-game action, anything from a taunt to a special move. The more Counter Gems the player sends over, the "bigger" the move the character will perform. These animations, however, are purely cosmetic and have no actual bearing on the gameplay(other than to indicate the magnitude of the counters).
The game continues until one player's field reaches the top of its fourth column (which is where all new gems first appear). That player is the loser.
HD Remix was announced to include several graphical upgrades in the interface, character sprites, levels, and endings, as well as the three gameplay modes included in the Dreamcast version; X-Mode, Y-Mode, and Z-Mode. Whereas X-mode is more of a rebalanced version of the core game, Y-Mode and Z-Mode have more drastic gameplay changes. Y-Mode makes the gems break as soon as three or more are aligned in a row, column, or diagonally, like in Columns, whereas Z-mode makes lines of gems rise up from the bottom of the screen, and the player controls a 2x2 square cursor, with which he rotates already-placed pieces, similarly to Tetris Attack.
Characters
As noted above, all of the playable characters in Puzzle Fighter (with one exception) are borrowed from Capcom's two major fighting game series, Street Fighter and Darkstalkers. The super deformed take on these characters gave the game a unique, light-hearted feel, a break from the rough and edgy fighting games that were prevalent at the time of Puzzle Fighter's initial release. A fighting game using these character sprites called Pocket Fighter was released in 1997.
- Ryu (Street Fighter)
- Ken (Street Fighter)
- Chun-Li (Street Fighter II)
- Sakura (Street Fighter Alpha 2)
- Morrigan (Darkstalkers)
- Donovan (Night Warriors)
- Hsien-Ko (Night Warriors)
- Felicia (Darkstalkers)
Hidden characters
- Akuma (Super Street Fighter II Turbo)
- Dan (Street Fighter Alpha)
- Devilot (Cyberbots: Full Metal Madness)
- Mei-ling (Hsien-Ko's twin who is actually the talisman on her hat)
- Anita (Donovan's little sister who accompanies him everywhere)
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is a downloadable game in the Puzzle Fighter franchise for PlayStation 3 (via PlayStation Network) and Xbox 360 (via Xbox Live Arcade). HD Remix was announced to include several graphical upgrades in the interface, character sprites, and levels.
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo: HD Remix has updated high-definition graphics. Each of the four colours of the gems have been associated with an element and given a new animation. Backgrounds and characters have also been redrawn, while the character sprites have been run through a bilinear filter.
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix supports 4 player in multiplayer, spectator mode, online play and rankings. Also featured are the three gameplay modes included in the Dreamcast version: X-Mode, Y-Mode, and Z-Mode, and an additional X' ("X dash")[2] Mode. Whereas X'-mode is a rebalanced version of the core game (X-mode), Y-Mode and Z-Mode have more drastic gameplay changes. Y-Mode makes the gems break as soon as three or more are aligned in a row, column, or diagonally. Z-mode makes lines of gems rise up from the bottom of the screen, and the player controls a 2x2 square cursor, which rotates already-placed pieces, similar to Ultimate Block Party.[3]
Changes from the original
- Several characters were rebalanced by having their gem drop patterns altered.
- Crash Gems now have elemental visual effects associated with them. Red gems are now Fire, Green gems are Wind, Blue gems are Water, and Yellow gems are Lightning. This does not affect gameplay and is purely a visual alteration.
- In the original Puzzle Fighter, the tempo of the music would gradually speed up the closer the player or their opponent was to losing the match. HD Remix does not feature this.
- In addition to the standard difficulty selection (Easy, Normal, and Hard), home console ports of Puzzle Fighter let the player alter the default speed in which gems would fall (marked by a number of stars up to five). This setting was removed for HD Remix.
- A challenge mode called "Street Puzzle" was available in the original home console ports of Puzzle Fighter. In it, the player was tasked with defeating specific characters as a means to unlock bonus content. HD Remix removes "Street Puzzle" mode entirely, as well as most of the bonus content it would unlock. What little bonus content was not cut from HD Remix is available from the beginning of the game.
- Dan's "Saikyo-Ryu Dojo" Tutorial has been removed, which was an attract demo in the arcade version and a tutorial mode accessible from the main menu in previous home releases. In it, Dan would provide a comedic demonstration to show the player the basics of playing Puzzle Fighter. In HD Remix, it has been replaced with a four page text-only tutorial under "How to Play" in Options.
- The original Puzzle Fighter contained a number of different "Win Taunts" that a character would pick at random to say to the losing player after a match. HD Remix removes most of the "Win Taunts", leaving only one per character.
- There are a number of palette errors in the sprites themselves. For example, during the Intermission featuring Akuma in his cave, all of the demons in the background have garbled colors.
- The "diamond trick" glitch has been eliminated. Attacks using the diamond are always at 80% strength instead of 50% (used normally) or 100% (using a glitch).
Influence
The fighting game Mortal Kombat: Deception contains a puzzle minigame called Puzzle Kombat that has essentially the same gameplay as Super Puzzle Fighter and which also makes use of superdeformed chibi character models. Konami is also releasing the iPhone game Castlevania Puzzle: Encore of the Night with similar, if slightly modified gameplay using characters and settings from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
References
External links
- Official Capcom Website
- Joystiq article detailing the announcement of Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix
- Strategy Wiki
Fighter Wiki.com/wiki/Super_Puzzle_Fighter_II_Turbo Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo at streetfighter, a Fandom Wiki
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