Lately I’ve been thinking about a certain genre of games. Why? Well you’ll find out at the end of this blog. This kind of genre is one of my favorite types of games, but I don’t know what to call them. They’re mostly arcade games where you run and/or jump around a single screen maze trying to avoid or chase things. Games that fall into this category include Pac-Man (of course), but also classics like Bubble Bobble, Parasol Stars, Snow Bros., Tumble Pop, Tinkle Pit, and many more. Some of these games adopt a more puzzley approach to gameplay, where you have to push around blocks in the right way to get past the stages. These ‘block-pushing puzzle games’ are what I’ve been thinking about lately, so I thought that I’d list my favorite ones in this blog!

Pengo

This was an early 80’s arcade game. You were a penguin and pushed ice blocks around to squish the bad guys called Sno-Bees. It’s really more action oriented rather than being a puzzle game, but I put it on this list anyway because I like it so much. It’s one of the few arcade games to pull me away from Pac-Man. When this game came out, there were already plenty of maze games. But Pengo was the first to let you really manipulate the structure of the mazes by pushing the blocks around. And it DID have a little bit of a puzzle element with the diamond blocks. You see, in each stage were three diamond cubes, and if you lined them up, you’d get bonus points. It was pretty easy to line them up against the wall, but you got tons more points if you lined them up in the middle of the screen. This took careful planning of where to push ice blocks, but it was totally worth it because the points you got from doing that were astronomical.

My first home game ‘system’ was actually an Apple ][+ PC, but my first game console was an Atari 5200. When the NES first came out, I didn’t get one initially because I was perfectly happy playing Pengo on my 5200 (until Zelda came out, anyway). I wish Sega, makers of Pengo, would bring it back. Actually they have brought back Pengo a few times. On the Sega Genesis, they had a Sega Channel satellite program that let you download games (Sega’s always been ahead of the times), and one of them was a Pengo update. But it really played more like Bomberman. Later, in the Japan only Sega Gaga Dreamcast game, there was a warehouse block pushing game that played the Pengo music in the background. Finally, around the time Pac-Man Battle Royale was released in arcades, Sega did something similar with a four player Pengo game! I REALLY wish I could play that, but I don’t think it has left Japan. Oh well.

Adventures of Lolo series

I just adored the Lolo games when I was a kid. You played as a little blue ball with eyes named Lolo. My dad said he looked like one of the Scrubbing Bubbles. You have to go through castles and tower rooms pushing blocks and solving puzzles to rescue your pink ball girlfriend Lala. While the three games in the NES Lolo series were typical of the block pushing puzzle type games, the Lolo titles were oozing in quality in terms of graphics, challenge, and content. There were three games on the NES. I played the heck out of the first two, but didn’t spend as much time with the third game because it came out after the SNES had been released, and by then my time was more focused with the 16-bit stuff. I hear there was also a Game Boy Lolo game, but I don’t know if it was released in the US. Come on Nintendo; put it on 3DS Virtual Console!

The Lolo games actually have a bigger history before the NES, though. In Japan, there were already a few Lolo games on the Famicom Disk System and MSX game consoles. The games were called Eggerland, and while the puzzles and gameplay were similar, the graphics were not as good as the NES titles. Some other gameplay differences in the Eggerland games included multiple paths, so the game was more mazelike. When HAL Labs wanted to release the Eggerland games in the US, they used some of the same puzzles and music, but upped the graphics considerably.

Yup, you heard right. HAL Labs was responsible for the Lolo games. In fact, for a long time, Lolo was kind of HAL’s mascot. They put him in all sorts of promo flyers for other games, and I even have a sales flyer meant for retailers that has Lolo pointing at sales charts and stuff! Really! One of my favorite memories of the Lolo games happened at the Nintendo World Championship 1990 tour when it hit Dallas, TX. One of the things they had at this event were kiosks showing off new games. In a way, it was kind of like E3 today. At one of the stations, a couple of reps from HAL’s US department were showing off Lolo 2, which hadn’t come out yet at the time. Since I was really into Lolo back then, I hung out at their booth a lot and got to know the HAL reps more. One of them couldn’t speak English at all, just Japanese, but the other guy would translate. We had a lot of fun and I even helped them play a practical joke on the Japanese guy, and afterwards they even bought me ice cream! In a way, that was kind of my first taste of how much I would enjoy going to E3 and dealing with PR reps later on. Yeah I could probably write a whole blog about my experiences at that Nintendo World Championships 1990. So many good memories. I even met Howard Phillips there.

If Lolo and Lala seem familiar to you, that’s because they’re still in games today! After HAL did the Lolo games, they went on to create a more popular character: Kirby! Maybe as a homage to their former mascots, HAL put Lolo and Lala in many of the Kirby games as boss enemies. In these games they were called Lololo and Lalala, probably because of the three syllable names of other characters. For instance, Kirby was originally called Popopo and lived in a land called Pupupu, and fought King Dedede. As bosses, Lololo and Lalala would push around green boxes, just like they did in their NES adventures. In the recent Kirby Mass Attack game on DS, one of the mini-games is pinball and one of the tables has you fighting Lololo and Lalala and their stage even looks like a level from the NES game!

When the Kirby anime cartoon was on TV, Lolo and Lala were in it, too! Except on the US cartoon they were named Fololo and Falala. In the cartoon, Lolo and Lala were friends of Kirby and helped watch over him and the two main kid characters Tiff and Tuff. Funny thing about Lolo and Lala in the cartoon is that they could float and fly for some reason! If they could’ve done that in the NES games, it would’ve made thing a heck of a lot easier! I wish I could go back and tell my kid self that Lolo and Lala would be in a cartoon someday. My kid self would’ve been blown away!

When I think of games that have scared me, The Adventures of Lolo comes up in that category, too. But HOW, you might ask. Well, in the game there are these Medusa statue enemies. If you pass through their line of sight, they will kill you. So puzzles with them involve moving blocks to keep them from seeing you. But when you get caught, it’s always unexpected, and they stop the bouncy music as you hear this loud and sudden “SHOOM!” sound effect that always made me jump. I always dreaded levels that had the moving Don Medusa enemies!

Anyway, I could probably talk all day about Lolo games, but I’ll stop right here now. I think you get the idea that I really liked these games as a kid.

Kickle Cubicle

The problem I have with the Lolo games now is that I’m not as patient as I was when I was younger. Which is surprising. So I have a hard time getting into the slower paced Lolo games anymore. And that is why I’m thankful for Kickle Cubicle. I never owned it, but I rented it a couple of times and beat the main four worlds. It was made late in the NES lifecycle so it had vibrant, colorful graphics and neat effects. I wish it would’ve come to Nintendo’s Virtual Console, as I would’ve instantly downloaded it. It’s a bit more action oriented so that’s why it’s easier for me to get into it now, as opposed to the Lolo games. In Kickle Cubicle, you play as a kid (or is he a polar bear) who can freeze enemies with his breath and kick them. Kicked ice cubes can squish other enemies or make platforms if they hit the water. Your hero can also make stationary ice pillars he can use to stop sliding ice blocks or shield himself from enemies. It’s kind of like a cross between Pengo and Lolo, and that’s probably why I like it so much.

Ms. Pac-Man: Maze Madness

This isn’t the best Pac-Man game ever made, and it just seems like they slapped it together since it was published a year after the successful Pac-Man World PSOne game. I bet it even used the same engine. But Ms. Pac-Man: Maze Madness is still a fun little game that cleverly mixes block pushing puzzles with classic dot eating maze gameplay. Since I was well versed in block pushing puzzle games before this game came out, when I played it at E3, I aced the first few levels in front of the developers and they were flabbergasted and asked if I had played this before! One other fun fact about Ms. Pac-Man: Maze Madness: One of the ways the PR folks planned to promote this was to have Ms. Pac-Man be a spokeswoman for breast cancer awareness. Namco partnered with a breast cancer awareness web site, and Ms. Pac wore a pink ribbon in the game instead of red. It’s true! I even have the press release! I heard they were planning on making a PS2 sequel, but it never happened.

Mole Mania

This game was the whole reason why I wrote this blog. I never played this game back in the day. It came out in 1997, which is more recent than when I thought it was released. But that does explain why I didn’t get it back then. I was a poor college student at that time. So when Nintendo released this Game Boy classic on 3DS Virtual Console, I snagged it right away. I’ve been playing it between bouts of other 3DS titles like Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, and New Super Mario Bros. 2. Mole Mania is very good, and like Kickle Cubicle, it mixes puzzles and action very well. It’s also a lot like Lolo, except here since you are a mole, you can dig underground and appear above in different places on the field. This dynamic changes how you think about puzzles in the game. I read that this game was actually made by Miyamoto and his team, which makes sense because the farmer villain in this game looks like a cross between Mario and Wario with a beard. The game also reminds me of dungeons in Zelda games, and the digging mechanic was a good indication of what was to come in future Zelda titles like Minish Cap and Skyward Sword. I think that Mole Mania would be a great game for Nintendo to revive, as the above ground/below ground mechanic would be perfect for the dual screens of the DS and 3DS. I’m glad that Nintendo released this on VC; they’ve been doing pretty good with their handheld VC stuff lately. Wish I could say the same for the Wii.

Conclusions

Of course there are lots of other block pushing puzzle games that I like, so this last concluding paragraph will serve as a list of honorable mentions of sorts. I’ve enjoyed playing other arcade puzzlers of this ilk, mostly on game collections, like Capcom’s Don’t Pull or Konami’s Kitten Caboodle. Most block pushing puzzlers are just mini challenges in bigger games, like Zelda’s dungeons, which are always fun. My favorite Tales RPG, Tales of Legendia, had block pushing puzzle rooms in every dungeon. Most would probably find them annoying, and the game makers must’ve realized this since you could get hints and skip the puzzles entirely if you want to. But I didn’t skip them or get hints, and I even think I got a special title for that. In the comments section, tell me YOUR favorite block pushing puzzle games.

Anyway, I’ll have one more big blog next week before I go to PAX in Seattle. Recently it has come to my attention that in December, Nintendo Power magazine will be no more. So I’ll have a tribute blog up about that. I would’ve liked to have a blog about that up sooner, but I needed time to collect my thoughts and plus I have other reviews to write, too. So look out for that one next week! Later! –Cary

Tags: Game Reviews