Collection essentials #279 & 280: Tetris Attack and Panel de Pon (SNES)

I realize that I have failed to give Intelligent Systems proper credit in some of my previous posts. They are a company that is separate from but closely tied to Nintendo, only developing games for their platforms, and often working with them directly on projects together or making games for their IPs. Games that were partially or fully developed by Intelligent Systems that I have already covered include Fire Emblem, Metroid and Duck Hunt, Mario Bros. (the non-Super variety) and more. 

Here is the start of a blocks-based puzzle game series created by Intelligent Systems that I am very fond of. It all started with a game released for the Super Famicom in Japan called Panel de Pon, shown here. That game featured a bunch of young-looking female fairies for its cast, and the story mode involved one of them (named Lip) going on a quest to defeat her friends in puzzle combat to break a spell cast on each of them. Seeing as most SNES owners in America were probably boys who were teenagers or younger, this cast of characters really wouldn’t have been suitable for them. So Nintendo had the brilliant idea to replace them for the international release with Yoshi and a series of characters from the recent hit Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island. It worked out to be the perfect fit, and aside from the characters and the sounds they make, they hardly had to change or add any music or graphics. The story is also kept basically the same, with Bowser being the one placing a curse on the various characters (even though most of them were Yoshi’s enemies to begin with). 

Then there was the issue of the name. “Panel de Pon” wasn’t really suitable as a title, so they had to come up with something different. They figured that having the Tetris name would be beneficial since that game is so popular. But this caused a couple of problems. For one, aside from being a blocks-based puzzle game with multiplayer, the two games really don’t have much in common. It also proved a problem for the series’ identity down the road, as they can’t simply keep using the Tetris name without getting the rights to do so for each new release from whoever owns Tetris at that given time. And I think the lack of a consistent identity has hurt the series long-term.

As for how this game plays, it is comparable to Tetris in the sense that you are trying to eliminate blocks and keep the stack of blocks from reaching the top. But unlike Tetris, instead of controlling the blocks, you instead control a cursor that you can freely move around the screen, and this cursor highlights two spaces at a time. The blocks rise up from the bottom rather than falling from the top. Pressing the A button will swap whatever is in the two spaces highlighted by the cursor, whether that be two different blocks or a block and an empty space. Lining up three or more blocks of the same color vertically or horizontally will eliminate them. 

There are a few different single-player modes in this game. There’s “Line Clear” where you try to eliminate blocks and survive until reaching a certain point in the rising stack. There’s “Puzzle” where you have to clear a preconstructed set of blocks in a limited number of moves. There are other modes for chasing high scores, and going head-to-head against the computer. But the real bread and butter of this game is multiplayer. 

When facing an opponent, you can send “garbage blocks” to the top of their stack a couple of different ways. When you eliminate more than 3 blocks at a time, that’s called a “combo” and will send garbage. The other way is called a “chain”, when you eliminate blocks and then the remaining blocks that fall as a result wind up in another set of 3 or more and get eliminated immediately upon reaching their resting point. If you’re skilled, you can keep a chain going and the garbage block you send to your opponent will be proportional in size to how big your chain was. Even if you’re not terribly skilled at building chains from clusters of blocks, you can still be competitive because eliminating garbage blocks grants a row or more or new blocks that will fall onto the stack, and there’s plenty of time to set up a chain from those falling blocks without a lot of effort. This makes for some real fun and intense multiplayer! 

I was first introduced to this game by my cousins Kevin and Peter who owned the game. I wasn’t very good at it when I was a young kid, but thought it was awesome. I kept playing it and eventually got the hang of chains. And I wound up getting really good at the game, as I’m sure Kevin and Peter will tell you! I wound up in possession of the original cartridge they owned, but it’s not the one in the photo, as that one currently lives at my parents’ house.

When the first Retro World Expo convention happened in 2015, they held a Tetris Attack tournament and I knew I had to enter, and did so with confidence. Sorry to toot my own horn, but I crushed the competition and won handily! One of my prizes was a Retro World Expo t-shirt that I still have to this day. Later on there was a Tetris Attack tournament at PAX East that was really disappointing because they used a setup with HDTVs that had a lot of input lag, which really ruined it. I didn’t win, but didn’t care because that setup was lame.

In modern times you can play the original Japanese game, Panel de Pon, for free if you have a Nintendo Switch Online subscription. That’s slightly unfortunate because the U.S. release is not only in English but it also has a new options menu and is therefore a little better. 

Tetris Attack is one of my favorite games on one of my favorite consoles, with both nostalgia and addictiveness on its side. A real quintessential essential. And I will take you on any day and toss some humble puzzle pie right in your face!!