Panel de Pon is a Super Nintendo puzzle game released initially only in Japan in 1995. The gameplay consists of matching blocks of the same color so that they break before they can rise to the top and cover the whole screen, ending the game.
it also has faries!
It's easily one of the most fun games I've ever played, I have sunken at LEAST 166.65 hours into it (the snes switch app stops counting after 9999 minutes, and boy it hit that a long time ago...)
Mostly because my mom wants to play it all the time! That makes me happy.
I'm not interested in making a review of it or anything though... I more so want to write about how it came to be (its cool i swear):
(Credits to shmuplations.com btw, i got this info from them, and they got it from a magazine interview, second degree stealing! also i remember cybershell mentioning them in a video once i think it was the dreamcast one??? idk im not too sure, their name is funny.)
So one day Gunpei Yokoi, manager of Nintendo’s R&D1 division (they made metroid zero mission and game and watch ball) told Hitoshi Yamagami (producer role in devils third for the wii u) to make a puzzle game for the SNES and suggested the idea of making a "15-Puzzle", a puzzle game where panels slide horizontally and drop vertically (NO FUCKING IDEA ON WHY ITS CALLED THAT) (anyways i propose my brand new idea, a 16-Puzzle)
wait apparently its this...
...
oh yeah i know what these are.
Anyways, with the game idea set in stone, they started developing the game, though they really sucked at it...
Not at developing, at the game.
"At the time, we developers were barely capable of forming 2- or 3-chains, so we weren’t sure we could anchor a competitive system around them." - Toshitaka Muramatsu, planner for Paper Mario: Sticker Star
wow, cringe
They eventually got the hang of it, which is also when they decided to add the big blocks that fall on you from the top of the screen, thats good cuz i cant imagine the game without that.
All the fairies (or whatever they're called) were designed by Makiko Tsujino (woman, as they pointed out in the interview) (interestingly, she doesn't seem to have worked in any other videogames, she knew there was no going up from here) and meant as temporary designs while nintendo didn't force the team to replace them with "Yoshi or that geezer with the mustache", as stated Toshitaka Muramatsu (still the planner for Paper Mario: Sticker Star, you can't change the past.)
Shockingly, Nintendo didn't ask them to replace the characters at all, and simply released the game as it was.
until
THATS THE GEEZER WITH A MUSTACHE
Tetris Attack is a Super Nintendo puzzle game released initially only in America, Australia and Europe in 1996. The gameplay consists of matching blocks of the same color so that they break before they can rise to the top and cover the whole screen, ending the game.
yoshi. they put yoshi in my fucking game, fucking yoshi.
They also renamed it to TETRIS attack, TETRIS.
It's baffling how the west corrupts Nihon's beautiful art
Ok im joking but seriously, this is a really funny release, they pulled a Doki Doki Panic again, but instead of a sequel to mario its a tetris sequel instead (not that one)
Them calling it Tetris specifically instead of something like "Yoshi Puzzle Blast" or whatever is extra funny because it means that they can't rerelease it without getting permission from the owners of Tetris (Tetris)
If only there was a version of this game without the Tetris brand in it that they could freely rerelease...
oh yeah
See? Now you know why they put the japanese one on Switch! And if you already knew why, then please, can you pretend you didn't and then reread the page? :(
Anyways, I'll dedicate some other day to the future entries in the Panel de Pon series, but that's all from me today, good night!