lexicon, they just can't seem to shake it. Granted, when it's jammed in the name of a

game that was pretty lucrative for them back in the 16-bit age - and stands as one of the

few vestiges of the ridiculously popular Puyo Puyo franchise available in the states - it's

a bit harder to disavow. For this 3DS Virtual Console port of the Game Gear version of Dr.

Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, they'd have had to rebuild the opening titles and change

some text around... granted, today that'd take like twelve minutes, but it's AUTHENTICITY,

dammit. We want everything in this painted-over Puyo title to be just as it was back in '93,

all the way down to the questionable inclusion of Scratch, Grounder, and Coconuts from that

godawful Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon. Not the good one that was on ABC

(that ended up being referenced in Sonic Spinball, come to mention it), but the direct-to-syndication

one that couldn't even be bothered to come up with a decent theme song. They just mashed

up the game's theme with whatever they could find in the public domain, like In the Hall

of the Mountain King and Flight of the Bumblebee! The heck does that have to do with Sonic?

I ask you! Edvard Grieg and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov are spin-dashing in their graves, man.

Oh, yeah. The game. It's Puyo Puyo, man... gather bunches of four puy-erm-beans, make

'em disappear and fling 'em at your opponent's side. It's one of the unique falling-block

puzzle games in that, in its standard mode, it's almost always played competitively. You're

not just working against a constantly-increasing drop speed, but also against a computer opponent

whom you have to consciously defeat. As such, just keeping your pile low isn't going to

be good enough; you have to design chain reactions, you have to have an attack plan in mind, you

have to keep your eye on their pile to determine the best time to strike, and you have to go

for a killshot rather than just surviving long enough. It's certainly an interesting

dynamic, and one that raises the general difficulty of the game by a significant margin. Of course,

it's a natural fit for head-to-head competition, which is facilitated in this Virtual Console

port by an expanded suite of touchscreen controls including local wireless multiplayer, and

extending to control configuration, save states, and extensive display options.

In addition to the standard Scenario Mode, there's a Puzzle mode that focuses on separate

goal-based challenges like clearing 11 puy-erm-beans at a time or completely clearing the screen.

Man. More games need notebook-style stages. For a portable game, on a system as limited

as the Game Gear, there's no difficulty in control or color recognition, a significant

leg up on anything Nintendo would've been able to offer at the time. It's all the chaos

of the Genesis-slash-Mega Drive version, just portable, as many of the best puzzle games

should be. This is a game for slipping into a puy-erm-bean-dropping trance, slaying evil

robots at every turn, until your mom jostles you and tells you we're at grandma's and you

realize you've just lost three hours. (Thankfully, this Virtual Console version benefits from

the 3DS's battery life, as a three-hour binge on an original Game Gear might've burnt through

as many as 240 AA batteries.)

But, unfortunately, the experience isn't without fault. The music - always an important part

of puzzle games, as you're usually bingeing on them for hours - consists of about two

tracks, and they're not really anything to write home about. I honestly could've done

with... well, even In the Hall of the Mountain King or Flight of the Bumblebee, just to spice

things up a bit. So turn up the stereo in the car and let that be your soundtrack, while

you smash puy-erm-beans together, jotting down the occasional password (if save states

are too new-school for you) and wondering why they didn't replace that orangish Carbuncle

mascot character with, like, Sonic's head or something.