I felt like writing a blog, and didn't feel like finding a new Starcraft Math project to work on, so I'll share with you guys one of my favorite games besides Starcraft.
The Puzzle League series began with Panel de Pon on the Super Famicom in Japan. It's a match three type puzzle game, with square blocks on screen that can be swapped by the player and disappear when combined into lines of three or more of the same color (much like Bejeweled). Except Bejeweled is a slow-paced game to play casually and let your mind cool down, while Puzzle League games are fast-paced, mentally exhausting, and extremely skill-based because of three differences: 1) You compete against an opponent, and drop "garbage blocks" on their screen when you get good combos. 2) You can only swap blocks horizontally, not vertically. 3) You can swap any two blocks, not just blocks that will make a line of three if you swap them.
Even though the text is in English, can't you just tell this is Japanese?
When Nintendo decided to release Panel de Pon in the United States, they decided Americans were too <insert disparaging adjective here> to play a straight puzzle game they didn't recognize. So they paid to use the Tetris name on it, and named it Tetris Attack! (despite puzzle league and tetris having fairly little in common other than both being block puzzle games). And to really make sure Americans would be interested, they made it Yoshi's island-themed, with a plot line and everything.
This title screen tells you absolutely nothing about the actual gameplay of this game.
Henk Rogers of The Tetris Company regretted letting Nintendo use the Tetris name on this entirely un-Tetrislike game, so when Nintendo started releasing their old games on the Virtual Console, they did not get permission to re-release Tetris Attack. They did, however, release the next game in the Puzzle League series, Pokemon Puzzle League. Pokemon Puzzle League was the same gameplay set in the Pokemon universe, where players chose trainers and pokemon, and each match was supposed to represent a pokemon battle. The soundtrack is entirely from the original Pokemon TV show, including taunts that your trainer or pokemon shout when you get combos or clear garbage blocks.
Apparently all those blocks and combos somehow represent a Pokemon battle. Somehow.
In all these iterations of the Puzzle League theme, the gameplay changed very little. What was there to change? The gameplay was simple (what's simpler than matching three blocks together?) The only controls you need are a D-pad and an A button to switch blocks (and L or R to make the screen scroll up more quickly, if you're really pro). Yet with such simple rules, the game's strategy is endlessly complex; you are given an essentially random arrangement of blocks, and you are tasked with looking for patterns that you can turn into useful combos that will pressure your opponent. You can drop small garbage blocks on your opponent by clearing four or five at a time, instead of the minimum of three, but the real rewards come from sequential combos: clear three blocks, which drops blocks that form another three (that would be a x2 combo; longer sequential chains reward more highly).
The effect is that there are virtually infinite combos out there for you to build, assuming you can think fast enough to spot them and move fast enough to build them. One could measure something like APM to represent how fast players can move around and switch blocks, and faster players will have more possible combos they can build. But it does you no good to move quickly if you can't think just as fast, spotting the combos that are available to you, and avoiding clearing sets of three until you can use them in some sort of combo.
Do you have any idea how hard this is?
While it may have caught your attention, my title for this blog was completely facetious. Why is that? Not because this game isn't incredibly strategically complex; it is. Not because it isn't exciting to watch, either; I often have friends over and have extremely tense matches of Puzzle League (We even designate a commentator sometimes, which is always fun and hilarious). In fact, Panel de Pon was played competitively in Japan (and still is, at least at some level). But it still doesn't work as an e-sport for two reasons, one obvious and one less so.
As with everything else, the American player base for Panel de Pon are referred to as foreigners and are vastly inferior to the Japanese competitive scene.
First, obviously, the graphics and sound effects are very dated. It seems like a modern version could be released that could be competitive, but I'm not sure how well that could be done. I mean you could give the blocks shiny surfaces, and replace the dated sound effects with all manner of explosions and adrenaline-inducing excitement, but when it comes down to it, it's still a bunch of colored blocks on a screen with a cursor moving around and switching them.
But the second reason is the much more interesting one. Puzzle League gameplay breaks down at the highest level of play. At a certain point players become skilled enough at building combos that both sides will just have an infinite stack of garbage blocks on the top of their screens at all times, so the only way to survive would be to continuously build combos, since it doesn't give you a game over while blocks are still clearing on screen; this doesn't make for very interesting gameplay.
In some cases when Panel de Pon was played competitively in Japan, they didn't play the direct versus mode where you drop blocks on your opponent; instead, they played score attack where players are given points for building massive combos, and the player with the most points after a set amount of time wins. This solves some of the problems that come into play at the top level in versus modeut, but it doesn't make for good competitive gameplay. You could play Bejeweled competitively too just by setting two computers side by side and seeing who scores the most in a set amount of time, but it's not exciting because there's no interaction. Part of what made puzzle league gameplay was the excitement of throwing out a really good combo to attack your opponent; then your opponent goes on a simply incredible clearing spree to stay alive. When it's just about scores, both players scroll their blocks to the top, then combo some massive chain to clear everything out, then scroll back to the top again.
This time we can tell they're Japanese, not from the artwork, but from the skill level.
So why, as a non-Puzzle League-playing Starcraft forum-goer, do you care? Because Puzzle League demonstrates principles about e-sports, and about video games in general. A lot of what makes a game a good e-sport is also what makes it a good game: exciting gameplay, diverse and interesting strategy, lots of opportunity for skilled players to excel over more novice ones, and direct interaction between the players. But an e-sport needs a little something extra.
First, it needs to be pretty. Lots of colored blocks and Yoshi-themed backgrounds may be fine for a SNES game, but it's not good for spectatorship. It should feel like Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder came together to make something grander in scale and more dazzlingly eye-catching than either of them could produce individually. In a word, it should be epic.
Second, and most importantly, the gameplay must remain interesting at the top level of play. You can give Tic Tac Toe mind-blowing graphics and special effects for every move, and the strategy will still consist only of draws. Any time a game seems to have been "figured out," it had better just be a really strong strategy that will be solved by players or patched by developers, or else the skill ceiling has been reached.
The last lesson you should learn as a reader is that Puzzle League games are awesome. Go buy Pokemon Puzzle League on the Virtual Console, and give it a try. If you can get past the bad graphics and repetitive sound effects, it's really good gameplay. I just got a x11 combo today for the first time, and improving at Puzzle League feels every bit as good as improving at Starcraft. It should give you and your friends hours of enjoyment — that, or lose you whatever friends you have. :D
Thanks for reading! I've said a lot that was obvious, and a hell of a lot that could be found on Wikipedia, but maybe you learned something from my blog, in which case, cool! Or maybe you didn't, in which case, man, you know a lot about Puzzle League off the top of your head.
Holy shet those guys in the video are insane. The scores are just flying back and forth. I kinda wanna give this a try, not sure if my hands will like me after a few hours of this...
A big thing that you missed is that a game that will become and REMAIN a good eSport has to be engaging to people who do not play it.
For instance, that's what separates league from sc2. League is not exciting to watch if you don't play actively, sc2 is (to some larger extent at least)
On August 08 2012 12:47 DYEAlabaster wrote: A big thing that you missed is that a game that will become and REMAIN a good eSport has to be engaging to people who do not play it.
For instance, that's what separates league from sc2. League is not exciting to watch if you don't play actively, sc2 is (to some larger extent at least)
You might be right, although that hasn't fully been my experience with league. I mean, you have to explain a little bit of what's going on for them to understand what the goal even is, but that's true with any spectator competition. But I have nerdy friends so they might be a little more predisposed to being entertained by puzzle league. Probably most people would just say "what's this shitty-looking block game? I'm bored." I think that's what most people say even if they have played Puzzle League.
On August 08 2012 13:20 a176 wrote: man, i was expecting some super puzzle fighter
Super Puzzle Fighter is great, but I don't feel qualified to talk about it at length; I never got around to buying it, so I never got all that good. I've only played at friends' houses, I don't even really know what the strategy is.
And for anyone wondering, yes, I did write this entire blog just to brag about getting a x11 combo today. Blaine never knew what hit 'im.
On August 08 2012 12:47 DYEAlabaster wrote: A big thing that you missed is that a game that will become and REMAIN a good eSport has to be engaging to people who do not play it.
For instance, that's what separates league from sc2. League is not exciting to watch if you don't play actively, sc2 is (to some larger extent at least)
I don't see how SC2 is exciting to the people who don't play it. They never know who's winning, and they don't know what's good.
I used to love playing super puzzle fighter. We used to have this Friday night drink night, in which we would play puzzle fighter for cash, and had $400 tournies once a month.
Great blog man, I love Tetris Attack/Pokemon Puzzle Challenge.
Yeah, PPL as an e-sport doesn't really work well--I once played a game of PPL 3D mode that was over half an hour, lol. It was exactly as you described--infinite garbage chaining until someone screws up.
What is interesting to do however is speedrunning the single player modes. The SDA record for Tetris Attack is crazy good (8:06 using standard RTA timing--my PB is like 18:00 RTA, lol)
Does puyo puyo have a competitive scene? I've seen streams of people playing it on some online server but idk how big it is.
On August 08 2012 12:47 DYEAlabaster wrote: A big thing that you missed is that a game that will become and REMAIN a good eSport has to be engaging to people who do not play it.
For instance, that's what separates league from sc2. League is not exciting to watch if you don't play actively, sc2 is (to some larger extent at least)
I don't see how SC2 is exciting to the people who don't play it. They never know who's winning, and they don't know what's good.
Not true--one of my good friends IRL got really into watching BW even though he didn't play it. It's really easy to learn enough to be able to know what's going on. Yes, BW and SC2 are different games, but I would be incredibly surprised if SC2 is much less watchable.
hahahah YES i love this game!! i have "pokemon puzzle challenge" for the gameboy advance its pretty sweet , it had 5 difficulty modes: easy normal hard very hard and INTENSE (which was black) i could never beat the last mode
and then i went to PAX one year and saw other people playing a different version of the game, oh my gosh that was a lot of fun everyone was so good hahah
On the N64, which is the version they put on virtual console, they have 5 difficulty modes as well: Easy, Normal, Hard, V-Hard, and S-Hard. I have yet to beat S-Hard, and I only beat V-Hard after hundreds of continues (it maxes out its count at 99, so I don't know an exact number).
The design is simple, fun, and really competitive. I think its easily my favorite puzzle game out there, and there's some really good puzzle games. When Blizzard released Starjeweled as a custom game, I wanted them to make a Puzzle League remake instead. Bejeweled is so... limited.
Garbage chaining (comboing by using the blocks that are made from clearing garbage blocks) is actually not all that hard. You have quite some time to plan something out before the blocks actually fall down. You can always prepare a vertical stack of 2 blocks and just shift it to the right place. Then if you did it right, the triple you just made will clear the next garbage line and you make another triple.
Big combos (10+) without any garbage involved are a lot harder to pull off.
On August 08 2012 16:09 xxpack09 wrote: Does puyo puyo have a competitive scene? I've seen streams of people playing it on some online server but idk how big it is.
Oh yeah, puyo puyo (or imo rather super puyo puyo 2). Lots of fun as well. No idea about competitive scene though. I guess it doesn't have the same skill cap issue, or not as much, since you can't combo with the garbage you get. You can still defend and attack, but since you have to time your defense against the enemy attacks while still trying to build up an attack it should be a bit harder...
On August 08 2012 17:39 ChristianS wrote: On the N64, which is the version they put on virtual console, they have 5 difficulty modes as well: Easy, Normal, Hard, V-Hard, and S-Hard. I have yet to beat S-Hard, and I only beat V-Hard after hundreds of continues (it maxes out its count at 99, so I don't know an exact number).
The design is simple, fun, and really competitive. I think its easily my favorite puzzle game out there, and there's some really good puzzle games. When Blizzard released Starjeweled as a custom game, I wanted them to make a Puzzle League remake instead. Bejeweled is so... limited.
Picture this: Jealous beat S-Hard with a record of eight tries, and his elite four run (ritchie, bruno, lorelei, gary, mewtwo) consisted of 0 deaths. It was unreal when I saw it happen.
I have yet to beat S-Hard myself ><;; shit's impossible.
EDIT: Gary Motherfuckin Oak.
EDIT2: Is it somehow possible to have an online play for this? It seems like Pokemon Puzzle League isn't the only version out there. I mean I could play on my N64 against the computer, but I get owned really fast & there really isn't a serious player base around where I live, so games get boring real quickly. It would be great to play with other players around the same skill level as myself. . .
There is a free game called "Crack Attack" which is pretty much Puzzle League and allows you to play with someone via internet. It's been a while since I last played it (actually over 6 years lol) though so my memory might be off or things might have changed.
I heard that in Puzzle Pirates the sword-fighting puzzle is essentially Puzzle League. But I never bothered to research more thoroughly because I have better things to do than play a puzzle-based MMORPG. But if you're really craving some puzzle league against human opponents, might be worth looking into.
On August 08 2012 12:47 DYEAlabaster wrote: A big thing that you missed is that a game that will become and REMAIN a good eSport has to be engaging to people who do not play it.
For instance, that's what separates league from sc2. League is not exciting to watch if you don't play actively, sc2 is (to some larger extent at least)
I don't see how SC2 is exciting to the people who don't play it. They never know who's winning, and they don't know what's good.
Not true--one of my good friends IRL got really into watching BW even though he didn't play it. It's really easy to learn enough to be able to know what's going on. Yes, BW and SC2 are different games, but I would be incredibly surprised if SC2 is much less watchable.
I don't want to get into an argument about this, because neither side will really ever win. I think the old BW commentators were more exciting to the newbs/people who didn't play BW. The new commentators give better advice from what have seen and heard.
LoL does take less skill to be what people call decent at the game, and at high level play, it's far harder to understand what's going on.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/iCQ7v.jpg)
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