@“穴”#p38517 It's specifically a clone of Money Idol Exchanger, which itself was very derivative of Magical Drop (so much so that MD devs Data East sued MIE devs Face over it).
Generally, I do think there's something lame about just how many "new" arcade-style puzzle games are transparent clones of existing games with absolutely no attempt at originality or even refinement—I can think of at least four direct Panepon copies kicking around right now, for example—but I'm not really fussed about the commercial aspect... like, I could not give less of a shit whether the holding company in possession of the Money Idol IP is or isn't getting a cut, for example, and in the vast majority of cases these puzzle systems aren't copyrighted anyhow.
@“gsk”#p38560 I understand that the push/pull controls and giant characters behind the playfield, a la Magical Drop (although maybe Puzzledama did that first ?) may leave to confusion in an arcade alley but the real scandal, to me, was rather how Money Idol Exchanger openly ripped off the mechanics from 両替パズルゲーム もうぢや Ryōgae Puzzle Game Mōdjya, released just a few month before and which deserves to be mentioned in this thread. The system of adding and merging blocks based on value, using the intuitive cultural reference of coins, was a genius idea and did not deserve to get thrown off the spotlight so easily with the good old moe trick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1aMGIH5zVU
But hey, at least, Money Idol Exchanger was a clever ー if shameless ー mix of two cool games. Fiscal Jesters up there is straight up Money Idol Exchanger with a 4 players mode. I agree with Brandon it's not such a big issue for a free amateur game but the choice of words in their tweet is very ill-thought. Just admit it's a Money Idol Exchanger clone.
@"KennyL"#p37805 Speaking of _moe_ tricks, I had no idea about that alternative mode in Space Invaders for the PC Engine! Crazy how the _bishōjo_ trend post-_Tokimemo_ impacted even some of the most respectable series back then. I am surprised it did not make it over to the Saturn version.
@“chazumaru”#p38565 I have wondered (but not to the extent that I‘ve ever looked into it, mind) whether the Money Idol team was specifically aware of the arcade version of Moudjya or whether they were taking from the PC version that had been on the market for a couple of years prior—anecdotally, it seems the PC version was far more widely-played than the arcade version, and I wonder if the arcade version could have fared better if they’d released earlier and not had to go head-to-head with a broadly similar and more widely advertised/distributed game.
Incidentally, RIKI (the dev behind homebrew Famicom projects like the 8BIT MUSIC POWER series) recently mentioned that a second-hand X68000 he'd purchased had turned out to be a former FACE dev unit that contained a bunch of Money Idol data, but the hard drive has since died and he can no longer retrieve the data.
@“gsk”#p38569 Yeah, I personally discovered the game via the Saturn port. At the time, I actually assumed it was ripping off MIE, until I noticed the release dates and belatedly put two and two together.
I only learned many years later that it was originally a PC game linked to Fujitsu computers throughout the second half of the Nineties. Apparently, many schools equipped with Fujitsu computers had a freeware (shareware? demo?) version of the game, which is why it makes sense several Japanese users would associate the game with PC in the same way that Oregon's Trail is uniquely linked (as far as I know) to the US educational system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z30z93IpRVU
However, considering the slow rate at which schools typically upgrade their hardware (although I guess Japan could have been a bit faster on this front), I am not sure if the game got known right away. For instance, I have no idea if the PC version was already widely known by the time it got ported to the arcades. It's also right smack in the middle of the _ochige_ craze thanks to Puyo Puyo 2 so maybe the rumor of some schools getting access to a cool _ochige_ game for free spread extremely quickly?
I discovered Shingata Kururin Pa! Maybe a year ago and it rules. You are dropping blocks to connect a fuse to a bomb, all.of which clears blocks. It's a lot of fun and the versus looks good.
For those who missed: Tetris The Grand Master‘s coming to PS4/Switch this week via Arcade Archives—this is the first positive step towards an official TGM revival in a long time, and The Tetris Company has apparently stated that any future games are contingent on this remaster selling well, so if you have any interest whatsoever in TGM or just allowing cool things to exist, I’d urge you to check it out.
(it's also not as difficult or ruthless as you might expect; the sequel games are where things got really tough)
Arcade Archives TGM is out in Japan now and will be fully available worldwide in a few hours—it launched with some very significant bugs (obvious graphical corruption, screen freezes, etc) but they seem to primarily affect the Switch version, so for those who are completely unwilling to wait for a patch, you might be able to get by with the PS4 version.
It certainly feels responsive when it's not throwing me into Virtual Boy Mode, I'll give it that.
Mikado had a small Money Idol Exchanger tournament this Tuesday evening. The tournament proper starts around 17:22 with a quick breakdown of the rules then at 19:17 begins the tournament’s first fight.
Puzzle Bobble 2X & 3 S-Tribute came out on Steam & consoles a little while back: it has a longer and more confusing official title but the gist is that it's an emulated two-pack of the JP+international Saturn versions of Puzzle Bobble 2X & 3, with the typical City Connection emulator suite and not much else:
Magical Drop 6 has a release date, it'll be out on April 26 for Switch and PC—it might not suck, but every one of Forever Entertainment's franchise revivals has been a miss for me, so I'm not especially optimistic:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2176320/Magical_Drop_VI/
Puzzle Bobble Everybubble also has a release date, it'll be out on May 23 for Switch—they've added 2v2 & 4-player co-op modes, plus a gimmicky faux-Space Invaders mode, but online's limited to 1v1 and it looks fairly vanilla otherwise:
https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/puzzle-bobble-everybubble-switch/
Puzzle game side-tourneys for EVO Japan include an Arika-endorsed TAP cement mode tournament, a TGM1 Big contest and tournaments for Puyo Puyo eSports/Champions, Touhou Spell Bubble, Panel de Pon and Levels VS (a vs.focused, arcade-only revision of a game with two previous versions on mobile and Switch, respectively), and there might be more confirmed before the month is through. Given that Arika has an official presence, and that the tournament falls over April Fool's Day (which they've traditionally used to announce or tease very real projects), I'm particularly curious to see what, if anything, they might have planned...
The finals for the latest Japanese Puyo Puyo pro series were held over the weekend—if you only watch one part, skip to ~6hrs, 2min to see the eventual champion Tomokun unleash a 17-chain (extremely uncommon even in solo play, let alone versus, and the first one seen in the 4+ years of the Puyo Puyo eSports circuit):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPEbdi8GcP0
@“◉◉maru”#p100832 I always had the suspicion that certain characters were better than others but I never knew in what way, exactly. Good to know for next time I play.
@“exodus”#p107308 some of the commentators are pro players and a lot of them just kinda speak like that, so there‘s no getting around it, especially when it comes to the cash-prize events. The circuit does run open events and events specific to grade-schoolers, women, etc and those can offer looser commentary, but you’re never going to find anything as loose as any of the grassroots/streamer events, Japanese or otherwise.
I figure people might already be aware but just in case: Puzzle Wednesday regularly runs casual and slightly-less-casual events for all manner of arcade-style action-puzzle games, with recent events including Bloxeed, variety nights of "not-quite-Columns" games and a really silly bootleg Tetris game called Puzzle King: https://www.twitch.tv/puzzlewednesday
(they're hosting part of a Magical Drop circuit this week)
