Play Ippatsu Gyakuten! DX Bakenou (Japan) Online

Ippatsu Gyakuten! DX Bakenou is a Japan-exclusive Game Boy title from 1990, developed by TOSE and published by Irem. It arrived during the handheld's early years, a time when puzzle games were finding their footing on portable screens. The game doesn't try to reinvent the wheel; it just offers a solid, focused experience built around traditional hanafuda card matching.

You control a cursor to swap adjacent tiles, aiming to clear the board by matching three of the same card. The main objective is to achieve high scores through cascading combos, which requires planning several moves ahead. Signature mechanics include the ability to slide entire rows or columns, adding a spatial puzzle layer, and special tiles that can clear large sections when matched. The pacing is deliberate, almost meditative at first, but the difficulty ramps up as the board gets more chaotic. It feels satisfying to set off a long chain reaction and watch the screen clear in a flurry of cards.