A puzzle game where you create chains."
Panel de Pon note is a Match-Three Game developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo. While not the Trope Maker for the Match-Three Game, it certainly helped popularize the genre.
You have a screen full of differently colored panels and marked by different shapes. You can swap the panels freely horizontally, but you cannot swap them vertically. Get three or more of the same panel in a row, and they vanish. Get more than 3 in a row, clear multiple sets of 3 at once, or create a chain — the panels that fall in to replace the ones that you just cleared form more sets of 3 or more — and you get more points. However, the stack of panels is constantly growing, and if it reaches the top of the screen, you lose. While a simple formula, it lends itself well to many variants: Play until you lose, score as many points as possible in a limited time, clear all the panels on screen with limited moves, and face off against a CPU to see who loses first (with unclearable "garbage" to speed up the process).
The original Panel de Pon came out for the Super Famicom in 1995. It stars a flower fairy named Lip trying to rescue her fellow fairy friends from monsters, who are using evil magic to possess them and flood their homeland with an endless rainstorm.
Since it was believed that no self-respecting Western gamer would buy a game featuring 'girly girls' in those days, instead of roughing the marketing up, Nintendo decided to do the infamous palette and name swap, the same way they did to Super Mario Bros. 2. The international version was dolled up as Tetris Attack in 1996 with identical gameplay but with a very superficial Yoshi's Island themenote , a few extra options and character profiles, and nothing to do with Tetris at all.note This version was simultaneously released for the Super NES and Game Boy, and was also brought back to Japan as Yoshi no Panepon.
It later saw two Pokémon-themed reskinnings: Pokémon Puzzle Challenge for Game Boy Color, which was almost a proto-Puzzle Quest, and Pokémon Puzzle League for Nintendo 64, directly based on the anime, which introduced a "3D" mode with a cylinder of panels instead of a stack. It had "battles" between Pokémon played out in puzzle matches, and some adventuring on the side. The name "Puzzle League" stuck in western releases: a Game Boy Advance compilation release (along with Dr. Mario) simply entitled it "Puzzle League," which had no theme whatsoever. The DS iteration, Planet Puzzle League, maintained the name while adopting a futuristic theme, though still with no characters.
An Animal Crossing-themed variant called Animal Crossing Puzzle League was released as a Game Within a Game for Animal Crossing: New Leaf after an update. This version of the game introduces a new game mechanic where if you fill up a gauge upon clearing panels, you will get the ability to use a special technique. By default, your ability is "Horizontal Wipeout", but if you use an Animal Crossing amiibo figurine, you get an alternate special technique depending on the figurine (for example, Isabelle's winter figurine gives you "Slow Panels", which decreases the speed of the gameplay).
Aside from Lip's Stick, a Mii Outfit, and her Spirit in Super Smash Bros., Lip has been nowhere to be seen in puzzle land for quite some time. She did, however, show up as a character in Captain Rainbow. You can also dress your Animal Crossing villager as Lip in New Leaf. Nintendo would finally release Panel de Pon to Western audiences as part of its Nintendo Switch Online SNES games, untranslated.
An open-source clone based on the Super Nintendo games called Panel Attack exists, which features online multiplayer/matchmaking. Additionally, several Spiritual Successor games are available and/or are in development online, including Flipon
(Released), Super Plexis (Early Access), and Swapette Showdown (Release Date TBA).
Individual games in the series:
- Panel de Pon (SFC)
- Tetris Attack
- Pokémon Puzzle League
- Pokémon Puzzle Challenge
- Panel De Pon (GC)
- Puzzle League (GBA)
- Planet Puzzle League
- Puzzle League Express
As a playable game:
- Animal Crossing Puzzle League in Animal Crossing: New Leaf - Welcome amiibo.
- Panel de Pon (SFC) in the 3.0 update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons via the playable Super Famicom.
This series provides examples of:
- A.I. Breaker: The AI always prioritizes the garbage block closest to the bottom of the well, even if there's a monster garbage block on top that poses the actual threat. If they can't clear that garbage block, they'll simply give up even if there's a solution to the garbage block on top.
- Ambidextrous Sprite: They switch sides depending on whether player one or two chooses them but if a character is holding something but everything will be in the same position regardless. Averted in Pokemon Puzzle League, as all playable characters have P1 and P2 backgrounds.
- Anti-Frustration Features: If the panels are close enough to the screen for the danger music to play, the stopping effect of combos and chains will last longer than it normally does to give you a bit more time to get the tower back down.
- Artificial Stupidity: If the AI's stack contains an excessive number of garbage blocks, it'll just give up instead of trying to clear them; even when in theory, they could turn the game around.
- Auto-Pilot Tutorial: The games feature these tutorials—however, they are welcome because they are optional and extremely in-depth (with six main sections and more supplemental sections featuring things like demonstrating the timing necessary for time-lag chains.
- Border-Occupying Decorations: Because the playing field occupies only the centermost vertical area of the screen, the rest of the display is used for borders themed around the various characters, with the score and time limit being placed there as well. The Game Boy version of Tetris Attack even features Super Game Boy borders that replicate the ones seen in the SNES release.
- Cap: The score capped at 99999 in Endless and Stage Clear mode in the original Super NES version. In Pokémon Puzzle League, this was increased to 999999. The GBA version lets you choose which to use, as well as sort of lampshading this by recording your fastest time to each one.
- Comeback Mechanic:
- Clearing a garbage block turns it into regular panels (or in the case of larger garbage blocks, the bottom row turns into regular panels while the rest turn into a smaller garbage block). If you can line up the panels underneath before the clear animation finishes, the new panels can fall and create a chain. As a result, matches between top players usually turn into garbage tennis - each player sends a maximum-size garbage block to the other, who clears the garbage while using it as ammo to create another massive chain that generates another maximum-size garbage block. Repeat until one player can't clear the garbage block within the two-second grace period.
- Creating chains and combos will stop time and halt the ascension of the panels. Creating chains and panels when the well is almost full will increase the amount of time the panels remain stopped.
- Credits Running Sequence: The VS mode ending sequence depicts Yoshi/Lip running on a rainbow bridge.
- Do Well, But Not Perfect: As impressive as it is, clearing your entire well of panels in a VS. match is extremely ill-advised. It's important to leave at least three panels you can match together to deal with any potential garbage blocks.
- Everything's Better with Rainbows: Rainbows acts as pathways Lip/Yoshi/Furil can run on. They bridge most of the areas together, though not completely as they still have to jump to reach the destination in some cases.
- Life Meter: The boss battles in Stage Clear mode. Larger combos/chains will knock off more HP.
- Match-Three Game: And it usually represents the game play style in Nintendo's various puzzle collections.
- Near Victory Fanfare: There's a music shift when either your or your opponent's well is almost full.
- Open-Ended Boss Battle: There's a Final Boss Preview midway through Stage Clear mode. It's exactly as powerful as the real Final Boss, so if you lose, the boss just laughs at you and leaves.
- Permadeath: In story mode, if you lose while playing as anyone but the main character, they're gone from your party for good.
- Puzzle Game: The normal game is a puzzle game in the Match Three sense. "Puzzle Mode" is one in the truer sense of a series of puzzles — each level gives you a formation to clear in a limited number of swaps.
- Recycled Title: Several games simply were called Panel de Pon or simply Puzzle League in one case.
- Score Multiplier: Gameplay is highly reliant on combo-based multipliers, as the game moves at a relentless pace and requires such chains both to keep up and to keep the opponent at bay.
- Some Dexterity Required: Unlike most other Match Three Games like Puyo Puyo, this one allows the player to manipulate their stack while a chain is going on; making new chains this way is called a Skill Chain. One might think this is simply an Anti-Frustration Feature, but it is in fact required for high level play, even outside of the competitive scene; not knowing how to Skill Chain on the fly is a good way to get kicked around by the CPU and especially lifebar-based bosses.
- Songs in the Key of Panic: As your (or your opponent's) well starts to approach the top of the screen, the music will change to a "panic" variant, warning you of possible danger. Uniquely for a game that invokes this trope, the "panic" theme varies depending on what stage you're playing on or which character you're playing as.