A Game Boy Advance game, released in early 2002. Developed by Ninai Games and released by Midway.
It has the honor of being the first console game ever produced in Finland.
However, I did not get this game due to patriotism. I bought the game because it has the Rampage coin-op characters, with the addition that Ralph finally has a tail. Now that's cool! =) The characters don't influence the game much, it doesn't matter which one you pick in the game - they're just decoration. They do growl and make noise on the background and climb the side of the playing area. In rescue mode, you can't pick the monster to cutify your screen, but each is shown in their full glory once you clear the screen.
The basic idea of the game, in all of the modes, is to clear the playing area of blocks. You have a row of blocks at your disposal and get more as you drop them down; The idea is to make contiguous areas of same color, and vaporize them by dropping a diamond-shaped "detoblock" down on the thing. There is a time limit, of course, and in some of the modes the floor also rises!
Single-player modes include
- Clear mode (clear the level to advance to next level)
- Puzzle mode (clear with limited number of blocks to use)
- Rescue mode (clear the area around your friend's cage to get him out - this is also how to get more characters to play with, only George, Lizzie and Ralph are available in the beginning)
- Marathon mode (Keep playing until it's impossible to continue - you can add more blocks to the bottom of the playing field yourself)
Two-player modes include
- Rescue mode (as in 1p)
- Score mode (Who gets more points in one minute wins)
- Attack mode (Clear blocks to add blocks to opponent's playing field, a la two-player Tetris)
(Two player game is possible with only one game pak.)
There are only two small weaknesses in the game: In inadequeate lighting, green and blue blocks are hard to tell apart (well, it's more of the GBA's general sin, admitted =), and there's no possibility to save the game, you have to use passwords!
Overall, an excellent puzzle game to pass time - and there's never too much of puzzle games for Gameboys! =)
(I don't think I have had Tetris dreams, but I have had Rampage Puzzle Attack dreams =)