Known as “Be Ball” in its native Japan, Chew Man Fu is an excellent arcade-style puzzle game where the gameplay involves pushing and pulling coloured balls around a maze.
Tag Archives: puzzle
Quarth, MSX
Originally released in arcades in Japan in 1989, Quarth became a cult hit when it was released for the MSX2 in 1990.
Quarth is basically part vertically-scrolling shoot ’em up, and part Tetris.
Adventures of Lolo 3, NES
HAL Laboratory‘s Adventures of Lolo 3 is a fantastic, cute and extremely playable puzzle game, first released for the Nintendo Famicom in Japan in 1991 (actually December 26th 1990, but we’ll say 1991).
Tetris, Game Boy
It would be remiss of me to celebrate the Nintendo Game Boy and not mention Tetris.
Tetris was the ‘pack-in’ game with the original black and white Game Boy, and probably helped sell a few million units in itself.
The Sentinel, Amiga
Geoff Crammond‘s The Sentinel (aka The Sentry in North America) is a strange chess-like game where you have to sneak up on an overseeing watcher, who is perched high on a platform, overlooking the play area, and absorb him before he does the same to you.
Spindizzy Worlds, Atari ST
The Atari ST version of Spindizzy is arguably the best one around.
Spindizzy Worlds, which appeared on Atari ST, Amiga and Super Nintendo in 1990 – is a more compartmentalised reworking of the original Spindizzy, with branching levels and puzzles and gem-collecting in a challenging isometric world. Well, various worlds. All themed in a particular graphical style, and each with its own set of individual problems.
Boulder Dash, Arcade
This 1990 arcade version of First Star‘s classic Boulder Dash dispenses with Rockford as we know (knew) him, and replaces him with a miner’s hat-wearing boy, although this doesn’t affect the game negatively.
Dig Dug II, Arcade
Namco‘s fairly unassuming 1985 release, Dig Dug II, is a fun sequel to the classic digging game, except in this game you are (the character) Dig Dug – on an island, with either your hose or your drill as weapons – and must defeat all the monsters to progress.
Kururin Squash!, GameCube
I only discovered this marvellous game recently, on the back of posting screenshots of its predecessor on here. But I’m extremely glad I did, because Kururin Squash! is a fantastic update of the same game mechanics that made Kuru Kuru Kururin so compelling to play: guiding a spinning stick around a series of mad, twisting mazes.
Kururin Paradise, Game Boy Advance
Fantastic 2002, Japan-only sequel to Kuru Kuru Kururin, developed by Eighting and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy Advance.
The King of Grabs 