Magical Tetris Challenge Review by: pray75 - 6/10
Not really magical, but goodHello, everyone!
This is the first review in what I expect to be a string of them, and I'm starting off with a little gem that wasn't well-known back when it came out, nor is it well-known on Vizzed, either. It's called Magical Tetris Challenge, and as you can tell, it's a Tetris game with a few quirks. First, some details: It features Disney characters, so you'll be playing as Mickey, Minnie, Donald, or Goofy, and you'll be facing the likes of Pete, the Big Bad Wolf, and some Weasel guy. It came out for the Nintendo 64 and the Gameboy Color (which has a few extra features, like Pete as a playable character), as well as the Playstation in Japan and Europe.
Now, a little back story before I go into the official review:
A little over a year back, I played this game called Tetris Battle on Facebook, and I was absolutely hooked. I'm a strong Tetris player, and I especially like going head-to-head against people or A.I. because I'm rather competitive in nature. Well, I had ascended to the top level, 50, whereas my family and friends couldn't get to half that number. Not a week or two after that, they raised the top level to 100, so I had to scale the ranking mountain again and actually did hit that level 100. When my friends asked me about my Tetris talent, I told them about a game I played back in 2000, which happened to be this game (I didn't remember the name of it at the time). When my mom bought it, she was good but couldn't beat the game, so I took on the challenge and eventually beat the story mode with all the good guys (not an easy feat, let me tell you). For whatever reason, that was like riding a bike, and I could perform even to this day, thanks to Magical Tetris Challenge.
I'm going to briefly explain the gameplay mechanics next:
Basically, you're playing Tetris, in which you drop the Tetronimos down and attempt to clear lines by filling in gaps where no Tetronimo extremity (as if a Tetris piece has an anatomy) exists. The difference comes in the way the battles are laid out. When you clear successive lines, you start sending "magical pieces," which really are just modified versions of the Tetronimos that are designed to drive you insane. These modifications include a five-block I piece, large Z pieces, five by five square blocks, and if things go really bad, giant pyramid shaped pieces that pretty much mean you're gonna lose. On the left side, there's a bar that fills up as you clear lines or have them against you, and when it gets full, all the pieces above the top of the bar (starts at 4, moves up to 6, etc.) are taken away, and you are left with an even number of lines with a hole that fits an l piece. Each time you fill it up, it gets bigger until you win the entire campaign or you lose once. Scoring combos sends larger and nastier pieces and negates some of the nasty ones sent your way. As time goes by, an alarm sounds and the pieces fall faster. Get your opponent's pieces to rise to the very top and you win. If they get yours to rise to the top, game over and you have to start the match again. After you win the match, your points are broken down and added up for you, but you lose all the points you've earned if you lose even once.
The competitive nature of the game is where I'm drawn in, especially because there's a strong motivation to beat your difficult opponents. I'll talk about that more when we get to the difficulty section. Despite the fact that this game carries a lot of nostalgia, I'm pretty critical of it as well. I'll explain as I breakdown each category.
Graphics: 4
The Nintendo 64 version of this game happens to be one of the few all-2D games for the system. As far as 2D standards goes, it's not bad. The characters look right, and the backgrounds are pretty interesting. Tetris pieces look nice, and even the little Tetris machines they steering to play (I don't quite understand it) have faces that remind me of the cabinet from Beauty and the Beast. There are two areas that the game scores low: First, the fact that the game is in 2D really isn't that appealing. I mean, yeah, it's Tetris, but I think there could have been an effort to make the game look better. Second, there are a lot of graphical glitches, but I think that's the fault of the ROM for the emulator or the RGR. The glitches are very strange in that most of them show a bunch of little baby Tetris pieces in the place of what should be a hand moving around. The same strange symbols and graphical glitches show up when they begin to break down and tally up the points, too. I'm not sure wgere there are other glitches, but I'm sure they are there. Anyways, these glitches and the 2D game on a 3D system make the Graphics score a 4.
Sound: 7
The sound is probably my favorite part of this game, even though there aren't any tunes that just jump out at you, nor will they ever be remembered like the music from Final Fantasy, Mario, or Zelda, but they are extremely catchy and I found myself humming one or two of them even after I stopped playing the game. Each player you face has a different song, and even if you match up against Donald as Goofy or Mickey, Donald's song is the same. Donald's and Goofy's are probably the ones that are the most catchiest, as I instantly recognized them when I started playing the game. Where the sound gets on my nerves is some of the sound effects when you select something. I can't explain it besides saying that it's loud and excessive, and that to me knocked the sound score down a whole point. The Sound score is a 7.
Addictiveness: 6
Perhaps I'm being a little too generous, and perhaps this is biased, but I find the game hard to put down until I beat Pete in one of the story modes. And once I do, I usually stay away from it for a while, because I had already chewed up an hour or more trying to beat Pete (seriously, I'll detail it more). I could say that's more of a personal thing as opposed to being something about the game itself being addictive, but I do enjoy competing and trying to do something until I win. The Addictiveness (or my addictive nature?) scores a 6.
Story: 2
This is a game about Tetris. There is a story mode, but it isn't much of a story. It centers around an otherworldly gem Donald finds while scuba diving in the lake or ocean (wha...?) that apparently has the power to control minds (you find that out in some of the other modes). I appreciate the fact that there are different pieces of the story that work together so you have a reason to control each player, but the story isn't all that interesting. For instance, in Donald's mode, while Donald has a Tetris battle against the Weasel over the gem, Pete steals the gem. Donald's just like, "Hey, how did you get that?" When he tracks him down in this random mansion, Pete is like, "I'll give you the gem back if you beat Wolf in Tetris." Seriously? That's all you got? And then he didn't even give him the gem back, and you had to beat Pete for it! In Mickey's version, Pete had already stolen the gym and turned everyone into mind slaves or something, somehow convincing Minnie to marry him. I mean... they
tried, but it's a Tetris game. You're not playing it for the story, you're playing it for the Tetris. The Story gets a 2.
Depth: 3
There's a story mode and an endless mode. I don't play the endless mode because I'm a battle kind of guy, but it's available if you want to play it. Also, I think the extra "magical" pieces are a nice touch, but that's about all I can say about it. I believe in the Gameboy Color version, there are some extra game modes, but I didn't play it nor do I plan to, so you might have to check that out yourself. Sorry guys! There's not much Depth, so I give it a 3.
Difficulty: 8
Here's the fun part. This game is a difficult game, even on a medium difficulty setting. First off, the controls are a bit screwy, and I had to use the 1964 emulator version to adjust because I got spoiled on playing Tetris Battle. That means my A button became the up arrow key and all that jazz. I could have plugged in my gaming controller but I really didn't want to have to retrain my hands to play Tetris on a controller, even though that might not have taken too long. When I finally got the controls right, I was able to win some games easily, but there is a bit of lag with the game. It's hard to explain, but it feels like the pieces slide on you sometimes. Like, when I go right three spaces, it'll go an extra one and throw me off. This happens quite often, and it's led to many losses.
Typically, I have always remembered it to be difficult with Donald, occasionally Wolf, and Pete. Donald is usually one of the first you go against, so it's strange that he's so difficult, but that's just how it is. I usually lose all of my points several times and have to beat him on a fluke or an excellent series of combos to send some nasty pieces at him. The story mode naturally progresses in difficulty, so it's evident that Wolf and Pete should be the most difficult, as they're the last two you fight, but the spike in difficulty between Wolf and Pete is ASTOUNDING.
Pete blitzes you like a mad-man, and even when you do put an excellent string of combos against him, he finds a way to either get his magical side bar full or he comes out of there like a champ. The matches against him usually end up long, and I often find the pieces moving way too fast for me. I usually pause right at the beginning of each piece to select it before dropping it in place. Most people watching me would consider me to be fast, but when a piece is moving fast already, my flaws become exploited fast. The best way to beat Pete is to set yourself up early on for a string of Tetrises (or super-Tetrises, which are five line clearings instead of four), and then try to put together combos. On occasion you'll get lucky and he'll mess up for you to win, but that doesn't happen often. Definitely a challenge!
The hardest part about this game was the new pieces coming at you. In Tetris Battle, you had extra lines with bombs that jumped up as your opponent sent you combos, and these were exploitable to turn around and blast your enemy with combos. In this game, you have some ugly pieces that make you have to stop and think where they go. Like, what do you do with a giant T where only a small T will do, or how do you handle a weird looking W shape? Those apparently did not stick with me in my mental Tetris programming of 2000, because I was stumped when I saw those pieces after I picked this game back up. Sure, you can exploit some of them to do some major damage to your opponent, like the long I piece or the five-by-five blocks that you can sometimes set up for a super-Tetris, but most of the time you're stuck with all these holes in your lines that you have to get out of. I'm not going to lie, the challenge is fun, but it can be a little frustrating. All in all, the Difficulty is an 8, with the understanding that I have not played the Expert Mode since I was 10 (nor do I intend to now).
Overall: 6
This is one of those games I was delighted to come upon, and it's a solid game. It does not stack up (pun!) with recent Tetris games, but I can't really base my judgment on that if I want to be fair. Instead, I had to rely on exactly how I felt while playing the game and compare it to how I felt when I was a kid, and to be honest, I didn't have as much fun as I remember. Perhaps that's a natural thing to happen; as I age, my taste in games becomes more sophisticated. Still, there is something about this game that will hold a place in my heart. The overall score I've given this game is a 6.
Graphics
4 Sound
7 Addictive
6 Depth
3 Story
2 Difficulty
8
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