"This game proved to me there is more to puzzle games than just Tetris"

My story with Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine game began in 1993. I was scoping through an old issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly, finding myself upon an ad for FuncoLand. I first thought Mean Bean of ''Whatever the hack that is''. So, I rented it once, and thought not much of it. (I can't remember my initial thoughts of the game.) But later rentals converted me, and I never really looked at puzzle games the same way.

(The story continued a few months later in their import gaming section. I saw a picture of a game that looked familiar to Mean Bean. Soon after, the words Puyo Puyo got glued and slammed into my brain.)

Instead of trying to convert the original characters and original story, Sega's American offices took ''liberties'' with the characters and the story. Yet, I can't help but wonder why Sega did so in the first place. It would have been more beneficial to the gaming public to have left the original elements in the game.

Enter the North American Genesis version: The plot is your basic, run-of-the-mill Dr. Buttnik plan to take over Sonic's home planet, Möbius. But he has focused his attention on a town completely inhabited by beans (dubbed Beanvile. ??? Moronic!). Thus, he wants to transform them into robo-slaves (sci-fi-style title, no?) into doing his evil work for him. Typical recycled Robotnik strategy this is, but it's a better story than not having one.

He prefers not to do this alone, since he has given his henchbots the duty to protect his machine. If you have played every Sonic game for the Genesis, you might recognize only about three of the robots in the game-- Coconuts (a monkey), Scratch (a chicken), and Grounder (a drilling machine?), all from Sonic 2. Well... maybe you won't.

Huh? Mean Bean was released in '93. Written on the back of the box, it said that all the robots featured in the game were taken from that syndicated weekday morning Sonic cartoon in 1993, aptly titled, The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. Most of the robots were minor characters-- very minor characters. Their minority is so apparent to anyone who has seen the show (like yours truly), it's possible to count the number of frames of unique animation on both hands and feet-- rather, that's all characters, combined. Well, now that out of the way, it's now time to move our attention to the essence of the game, Puyo Puyo.

Puyo Puyo's basic gameplay is actually simple. Although, in honesty, when I first played this game back in '93, I thought was more constrictive on how to play. OK. Here goes...

Pairs of jelly-like blobs fall from the top of each player's side of the screen. You rotate them, place them where you wish, and are required to connect at least four of a similar color. Horizontal and vertical lines are an option, of course, but there are other ways to score a match-- you can even form C-, F-, H-, L-, S-, and T-shapes, crosses, even forming small 1's and 4's. The only restriction to this freedom is that blobs can never connect diagonally.

There is more. Blobs that don't match up fall in to fill up whatever gaps the vacated blobs left behind, and possibly more and more points.

Yes, there is still more. In combat (be it against another player or the computer), a high-scoring combo will cause some beans to magically appear on the other side. These blocks are just useless, since they only get take up valuable space and get in the way. And can create one furious opponent-- coooool! (It's common for a garbage bean to fall in that exact spot where your next move was planned.)

I'm gasping for air here. There is still more, believe it or not. You know these garbage beans? Getting rid of them requires a matching set of 4+, and the garbage beans disappear, allowing further beans to create more and more and more hits, and the once-near-death player can exact sweet revenge and win by proper planning. (Knowing which bean will start a huge chain reaction can be devastating to a person who thought they had it locked.)

[gasping for air!]

One final note: Beans piled too high does not necessarily mean a guaranteed loss. Losing is a matter of the third column from the left topping off. Even with all other columns filled to the brim, it's still possible to receive that one set of blobs and make an astounding comeback. But if that third column is full in an otherwise empty field, you're dead.

OK. Having spent my last few breaths describing how Puyo Puyo works, there really is nothing else that needs as much descriptive text (thank God!).

The graphics are decent, albeit plain-wrap. As you get (sorta) introduced to the enemy characters, you get a background taken from the TV show (the same one for all), the enemy robot (with as many frames of unique animation as a normal human has fingers), and a text balloon. In the game, save for the blobs' animation, the enemies' facial expressions, and that ''Has Bean'' character, Mean Bean is practically a still-life portrait. They do their job, but that is all that they do.

Audio is another lightweight area. There are a handful of tunes, of course, and they fit-- the ''1P vs. 2P'' game does sound like a hyper-active shooter (EGM was right). SFX other than a ''Yippee!'' or ''Yee-ha!'' at different pitches are almost hard to come by. Of course, building up a major combo, hearing all those joyous reactions, and seeing your opponent piled in garbage beans is funky.

After playing this game so much (reaching 1,776,105pts. from scratch in the non-vs. game), Mean Bean has become a bit dull. Just because it's lost a bit of its edge, I have absolutely no good reason to give Mean Bean a lower score. The unique gameplay certainly helped.

In total honesty, it's a flat-out shame that no other company (except Nintendo) has had the brains to release the later versions of Puyo Puyo to American shores. It would also be a treat to see at least one version of Puyo Puyo released on American shores in its original, Japanese form-- original characters, original artwork, original music... original script, original Japanese voices (or having some professional agency dub it in English for all I care). I really don't need another version of Tetris made available* (especially Nintendo's lame-assed N64 versions). For once, I would like to see a different puzzle game wash up here in the USA (but I can't leave out Canada), and I would want that game with the words Puyo Puyo written (in English) on the box, on all pages of the instruction booklet, and the label on whatever format it comes on, be it cart or CD.

*I would, however, like to see a re-release of what could easily be best described as the best versions of Tetris ever released: Atari's arcade version or the Tengen NES version.

MY SCORE: 8.0

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/27/01, Updated 10/26/01