Play Puyo Puyo (Japan) on gb Online

I first played Puyo Puyo on the Game Boy back in 1993, a port of the arcade game developed by Compile. It was a time when puzzle games were really finding their footing on handhelds, and this one stood out with its bright colors and frantic two-player mode, even if you needed a link cable to make that happen. It felt distinctly Japanese, from the character art to the quirky sound samples, and it was a nice alternative to the more methodical Tetris that dominated the scene.

You control a cursor to rotate and place pairs of colored blobs called Puyos as they fall. The goal is to create groups of four or more of the same color to clear them from the screen; the real strategy comes from setting up chain reactions where one pop causes others to cascade. When you clear multiple groups at once, you send nuisance Puyos over to your opponent's side, which can quickly turn the tables. The pace is fast, and the difficulty ramps up sharply, especially against the computer's later opponents. It feels satisfying to set off a big chain and watch your opponent's board fill up with garbage blocks.