Picture Puzzle

"Solid 'Paint by Numbers' (Picross) Game"

In the late 80's, ''Paint by Numbers'' logic puzzles were invented by Tetsua Nishio; these enjoyed notable success in Japan not only in the pencil-and-paper versions published in ''Puzzler,'' but also in the ''Picross'' series of games released on the GameBoy and Super Famicom.

The US exposure to this sort of puzzle has been much more limited; the first GameBoy Picross game was released here as ''Mario's Picross'', and a collection from ''Puzzler'' was rereleased in the states by the now-defunct Games Magazine. If you're familliar with this sort of puzzle, this game offers more of the same.

For the rest of you, ''Paint by Numbers'' puzzles start with a blank grid, generally ranging anywhere from 10x10 to 30x30 squares, and, if you've done it right, end with some of those squares filled in to make a picture. Each puzzle provides rules indicating how boxes in each line, both vertical and horizontal, should be filled in. Rules are stated as a string of numbers; as an example, a line could have the rule ''4, 6'', indicating that somwhere in that line there would be a string of four squares filled in, and some point after that there would be a string of six more filled in. Explaining much futher without the ability to offer an illustration would be difficult, but the manual and in-game tutorial both offer the rules of the puzzles and basic strategies for solving them.

The game offers a total of 200 puzzles: 20 5x5 puzzles, 105 10x10's, and 75 15x15's. This is baised towards smaller puzzles because the grids in anything larger would be incredibly tiny on the NGPC's screen. Also, larger puzzles take much longer to solve; smaller puzzles allows you to pick up the Pocket for 10-20 minutes at a time and, on a good day, solve a complete puzzle.

The 5x5 puzzles aren't terribly interesting; not only are they too small to show any detail, they're also all each solveable within a minute. They do offer a chance to become familliar with the process of solving puzzles, though perhaps offering twenty such chances was excessive.

Upon completion of a puzzle, the game replaces it with a colored version of the same grid and gives it a title. Especially with the smaller puzzles, this is helpful in that it is sometimes otherwise unclear as to what exactly the completed picture is supposed to be. Because it colorizes them, the game requires the Neo Geo Pocket Color, i.e, it won't run on a monochrome Neo Geo Pocket. This does not make much of a difference to US folks, since the monochrome version wasn't released here.

Since solving all 200 puzzles likely represents 10-20 hours of play, you are offered two slots in which you can save your progress towards solving them, as well as your best time for solving each puzzle. You may also save your progress in the middle of solving a puzzle, though you may only have one puzzle in progess at a time. At any point in the game, you can choose to start solving any of the 200 puzzles, although the game gives indication of a bonus puzzle that is unlocked at some point.

The music and sound effects are forgettable and only distract. The graphics display the puzzle clearly, albeit with tiny numbers for the 15x15's. Put simply, neither graphics nor sound is a selling point for this game.

There is no US version of this game; the European and Asian versions were released in the last days of SNK's operations in those markets; both have English text. The manual and in-game tutorial are both clear and offer an introduction to the game and simple strategies for solving the puzzles. In the Japanese version these are in Japanese, as are the titles given to each completed puzzle. Note that any NGPC game from any region will play on any NGPC system without modification.

In the end, while this game offers no technological advantage over other similar games, it does offer 200 solid ''Paint by Numbers'' puzzles; if you've seen such puzzles before, you know what to expect. If you haven't, those who like logic-based puzzles and are looking for something a little different will likely be pleased with these.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/19/00, Updated 08/19/00