Pokémon and Puzzle Games

I love puzzle games even before I began to take a liking to Pokémon. So certainly Pokémon and puzzle games are a natural match for me; I can enjoy spatial and mental fiddling with a theme that I enjoy. And actually, Pokémon and puzzle games have a somewhat interesting and lengthy history. Shuffle may be the most recent iteration of its type, but it has a few predecessors of its own on different consoles as well.

One of the earliest yet most well-known Pokémon-and-puzzle-game iterations is the famous Pokémon Puzzle League for the Nintendo 64. The gameplay takes Panel de Pon or Tetris Attack and combines it with a heavy influence from the anime; the story practically involves a puzzle adventure with Ash around the Kanto league. One interesting twist that this game offers is a cylindrical 3D play field for certain stages; since it's cylindrical, the horizontal dimension wraps around and you have to be even more careful not to let certain parts of the field go out of control. It's definitely a game that requires fast button reflexes and a sense of direction when working the field.

For those that didn't have the Nintendo 64 but do have the GBC, they can play Pokémon Puzzle Challenge instead. The game is the same as Puzzle League, only repackaged in a portable manner; it has a Johto theme and story (not based on the anime) but some modes are missing, like the 3D cylindrical mode. It might seem a little slower, but once you get to the upper levels, you'll still need the reflexes and the sense of direction.

The age of Pokémon touch puzzle games began with Pokémon Trozei for the NDS. Its slogan is "four in a row, and you're good to go"; this is indeed your objective as you try to line up Pokémon as you encounter them, sometimes using Ditto as a "wild card". The storyline is also totally original and not based on the main series. On the 3DS, this game was expanded for all six generations and dubbed as Pokémon Battle Trozei. It was the latter game that provided the seedbed for Pokémon Shuffle; the graphics in Shuffle are carryover from Battle Trozei, though the mechanics were only vaguely similar.

Even before Shuffle came to town, Pokémon had already embraced puzzle games for some time. It was only natural that this happened; Pokémon had already provided room for a mental workout with the RPG main series, and with puzzle games, the mental workout expanded into a different kind. As a lover of puzzle games, I would play these again and again - in fact, that's what I'm already doing with Shuffle - and I look forward to future puzzle iterations and the mental workouts they provide.