Collection essentials #560: Nintendo Puzzle Collection (GC)

What we have here is a nifty little three-game compilation that, puzzlingly (pun intended), only came out in Japan. One of these games is a port of Dr. Mario 64, which had strangely enough only been released in America originally. Another game on here is a full remake of Yoshi’s Cookie, a game that hasn’t made my essentials list in any form previously. The third is, in my opinion, the real star of the show, which is a remake of Panel de Pon, released outside Japan with different characters in forms such as “Tetris Attack” on SNES and “Pokémon Puzzle League” on the N64.

To read more about Dr. Mario 64, you can read my previous blog post about the original version.

You can also read more about the basic gameplay of Panel de Pon in my blog post about the original releases.

Yoshi’s Cookie is not your usual “falling blocks” puzzle game. Instead, you start with a square-based grid with cookies of various shapes. You control two lines that go across the screen, one horizontal and one vertical. You can move them around and slide a given row or column of cookies in a direction of your choice, with the goal of creating a line of cookies of the same shape in order to eliminate them. In most modes, new cookies will enter from the outsides of the screen and try to affix themselves to your cookie bunch, so you’ll want to act fast to eliminate them before too many new cookies come mess things up. There are different modes like you’d expect, such as two-player versus and a “puzzle” mode where you have to clear a specially-arranged set in a limited number of moves. Yoshi’s Cookie is a decent game, but it’s never struck me as one that I’ve wanted to spend a lot of time with, so I don’t have too much to say about it.

The Panel de Pon remake has new graphics and music as you’d expect, and it also brings with it the cylindrical “3D” mode which had been introduced in Pokémon Puzzle League (which also, oddly enough, was also not released in Japan). The other typical modes of Panel de Pon are present. But for me, there’s one major selling point to this remake, and that is…multiplayer now allows for FOUR players! To date, this is the only console version of the game which has this feature.

The game also shipped with a connector cable for the Game Boy Advance as well. Why? Well, one neat thing is that you can download one of these games to a GBA (until it’s powered off) without a cartridge inserted and play on the go. The other reason is to use a GBA as a controller. The standard GameCube d-pad is quite small and not ideal when playing a puzzle game like this where precision is necessary. I’m sure many gamers, especially those with big thumbs, would appreciate being able to use the GBA d-pad instead. Of course, there are other compatible controllers and adapters you can get to also circumvent this issue.

As a big fan of Panel de Pon/Tetris Attack, I knew I had to get this game when I found out that it existed. Unfortunately I’ve never had (to my knowledge) a proper glorious faceoff with three other enthusiasts of the game to really get the most out of the four-player mode, but I still had a great time with it. If you're a local person who’s interested in playing it with me…hit me up!!

It’s a darn shame that Nintendo hasn’t rereleased this lovely little collection of games. I’m thankful that I at least am able to call it an essential in my GameCube library.