Color Cross, Nintendo DS

Developer: Little Worlds Studio
Year: 2008
1 Player


I stumbled onto this game shortly after Picross 3D. It is itself another twist on the Nonogram formula, except instead of adding a dimension, it adds color.

The game design works reasonably well - each puzzle is effectively broken-up into layers, with a different set of row/column clues for each color. Any filled squares remain filled when you switch to another layer, while the marks for empty squares are strictly per-layer. Thus you're essentially solving several inter-related Picross-style puzzles - if you get stuck on one layer, doing some work on the others may solve your quandary.

However, this game has issues, primarily that of the interface. The puzzle grid is rendered rather small, and as-such I often find myself accidentally tapping the wrong square and getting penalized, or incorrectly marking a square as empty, causing other problems down the line.
Furthermore, many of the more complex puzzles have so many clues in a row or column that they don't all fit on the screen at once. How does the game solve this? By shifting the clue-boxes to cover part of the board - often a part of the board you're trying to see and/or mark!
This last bit is helped slightly by the fact that you can move the board around the screen, allowing you to shove the bottom-right edges off screen to make room for the clues, but that in itself can cause further issues since suddenly part of the grid is hidden from you.
Additionally, what the game does when you tap the screen varies on which button you pressed last: Up to paint, down to mark, left to move. It's far too easy to forget what mode you're in and start crossing-out squares you meant to fill, or getting penalized for filling squares you meant to mark.

Personally, I think Picross DS handled these issues much better. In that game, you always play from a zoomed-in perspective, which helps take-care of the wrong-square-tapping. If you aren't currently pressing and buttons, your stylus will scroll the board around, with the appropriate clues being overlaid along the top and left; just the numbers, so you can still still around them. In order to fill or mark, you need to be holding down the appropriate button - this eliminates 'mode'-confusion.

Overall, Color Cross feels like a rather amateurish title - more like someone's homebrew DS game than a commercial release. Still, it's an interesting twist on the Nonogram concept. If you really like this style of puzzle, and you've got a steady hand, it could be worth a look.

Picross 3D, Nintendo DS

Developer: HAL Laboratory
Year: 2010
1 Player

This is a game of logic and numbers. There's no storyline, no action sequences, no combat system - it doesn't test your reflexes, just your mind. If this doesn't appeal to you, you'd might as well stop reading now, as this isn't the game for you.

There exists a form of logic puzzle known as Nonograms, Griddlers or Paint by Numbers. In a nutshell: you're given a blank grid, with a bunch of numbers across the side and top, indicating how many squares are to be colored-in in that row or column. By deducing which squares are filled and which are emptied, an image emerges. There have been various implementations of this game, such as Mario's Picross for the original Game Boy and, more recently, Picross DS.

Picross 3D is an extra-dimensional adaptation of this puzzle - instead of a two-dimensional grid of squares which you leave empty or fill in, it's a three-dimensional grid of cubes which you remove or leave present. Additionally, in a normal Picross puzzle, multiple separate groups of squares are indicated by listing multiple numbers for the row/column. Picross 3D indicates this with a single number for the total number of cubes, encapsulated in a either a circle (two groups) or a square (three or more).

Even if you've never played a Picross-style puzzle before, Picross 3D includes a full, in-depth (no pun intended) tutorial to get you going, consisting of explanation, illustration, demonstration, and simple puzzles you can play yourself to try out the techniques as you learn them.

Outside of the tutorial, there are several difficulty settings, unlocked sequentially, and within each difficulty is a number of puzzles primarily broken up into 'levels' (also sequential) of typically 8 puzzles and 2 bonus puzzles. The game tends to require you to solve each puzzle within a given time-limit, and you're not allowed to make more than five erroneous removals. Failure to do so results in the puzzle ending prematurely, forcing you to restart. On the other side of the spectrum, if you complete puzzles fast-enough and without making any mistakes, you can unlock bonus puzzles to play. There are also occasional puzzles with special challenge conditions, such as getting game-over at the first mistake, or a very short time limit which extends as you correctly eliminate cubes.

The interface is pretty good - you use the touch-screen rotate the grid around so you can see it from any angle. Additionally, if you need to look at some cubes which aren't visible from the surface, the game gives you a couple of handles you can poke-and-drag to temporarily 'cut' into the shape. Once you've found a cube you wish to eliminate or mark as required, you hold a button (d-pad for right-handers, face-button for lefties), and tap the cube on the screen. If you forget which button marks and which removes, there's a little reminder in the bottom corner of the screen. The only issues I've encountered is that sometimes I'll accidentally grab the slicers when trying to rotate the grid, and that the game doesn't like you rotating vertically past the top or bottom, as this would turn the shape (and most of the clue-numbers) upside-down.

There's not really too much need for sound in a game like this - there are a few sounds tied to things like marking a cube, removing a cube, usinga slicer, etc. There's also some music which I'm not too thrilled about - some of the tunes become a bit annoying after a while. Thankfully you can turn the music off, or just turn the DS's volume all the way down.

If you enjoy puzzles, logic, or Nintendo's earlier Picross games, Picross 3D is a novel twist which I would definitely recommend.

- WNivek

Ballblazer, Atari 7800

Year: 1987
Developer: Lucasfilm Games
0-2 Players

Ballblazer, Ballblazer, where to begin...
Despite what impression the title may give you, Ballblazer is a futuristic sports game, somewhat similar to Soccer. One ball (the 'Plasmorb'), two players piloting 'Rotofoil' crafts, and two goals which shift back and forth. Get control of the ball and fire it into the appropriate goal, or wrest the ball from the opponent and prevent them from scoring.

The scoring system is a little unusual. Both players start with 0 points, and the first player to 10 (or highest score at time-over) wins. Fairly standard stuff, except that the total of both players' scores can never exceed 10. For example, if the game's tied 5 to 5, the next point scored by one player would also decrease the other's score, making it 6 to 4.
Similar to basketball, the score you get from a goal varies based on where you made the shot. If you were right up next to the goal, 1 point. A fair distance away, 2 points. If you somehow manage to make a goal while the goalposts are past the edge of the horizon, you score three points. A shot like that is difficult, but can really turn the tide when time's running out.

Ballblazer was developed by Lucasfilm Games (nowdays known as Lucas Arts) around the same time as Rescue On Fractalus. Despite the limited hardware of the time, both games managed to achieve something we take for granted these days: a real-time 3D, first-person perspective.
Ballblazer in particular actually provided two such viewports, one for each player, with the first player's view occupying the top of the screen and the second player's down below, with the clock and scoreboard occupying the narrow strip in-between.
However, to achieve such feats on the hardware of the time, there were some limitations. The graphics, while striking, are rather low on detail. And the sense of depth is provided through foreshortening, parallax, and a grid-like playfield with horizontal lines stretching straight across the screen, and diagonal converging in a one-point linear perspective. The game requires, then, that the player is always facing one of the four cardinal directions. Even so, at the time it was pretty amazing.

Your joystick slides you forward and back, and strafes you from side to side; a surprisingly contemporary setup. But unlike modern games, there's no second control to look and turn. Instead, your 'rotofoil' makes instant 90-degree turns to face towards your current objective - the ball if you don't have it, or the goal if you do. While this may be disorienting at first - especially for the modern FPS-player - in some ways it greatly simplifies one's navigation: If you don't know where to go, just go forward, and eventually you'll see your objective again.

Sound design in this game is excellent. The 7800 version is one of a small number of games which included an extra chip (the 'Pokey' chip, from the 8-bit Atari computers) in the cartridge to help with the sound. The title-screen leverages the Pokey to produce a jazzy, algorithmically-generated tune over a simple bassline. The in-game music is subtle yet fast and percussive, quietly adding to the game's feeling of speed and tension, while not getting in the way of the buzz of a nearby opponent or the swish of the Rotofoil's turns. The sound does a good job of supplementing the mood while still informing of in-game action. Even the goal-scoring fanfare differs between the two players, so anyone within ear-shot can tell how the game's going.
Unfortunately, due to how Ballblazer uses that extra chip, most 7800 emulators can't quite handle the title music properly. Some do okay, but for the full Ballblazer experience you're better off playing it on the real hardware.

The game is marginally configurable - you can set how much time is on the clock, from 1 to 9 minutes, and you can replace either or both of the human-players with computer-controlled 'drones' with 9 levels of difficulty speed.

Maybe it's just me - I've been playing this game since I was a little kid - but I find the drones to be utterly lacking in challenge by now. Sure, drone 9 can hardly be stopped once he has the ball, but it's possible snatch the ball first and stand between the two, leisurely coasting towards the goal to kill time and make a 2-point shot. The drones may be alright for practice, but this is best considered a two-player game, where your opponent can react intelligently to your maneuvers.

Overall, I feel that Ballblazer is an excellent game; it's fast, unique, and ahead of its time. Definitely worth a look if you want a bit of quick, competitive 2-player.


- WNivek


P.S.
I often find myself wishing for a good remake of this game. Masterblazer (1990, for Atari ST, Amiga and DOS PC) tried to update it a little, but somehow the graphics and sound just don't do it for me - they made the sprites more detailed but ruined the smooth scaling, and the new rendition of the main theme is severely lacking. They also produced Ballblazer Champions in 1997 for the original PlayStation, but it changed too many things; it plays too different to properly succeed Ballblazer. If you happen to know of a good modern remake, I'd be happy to hear about it.