''Puzz Loop'' is an

arcade Arcade most often refers to: * Arcade game, a coin-operated video, pinball, electro-mechanical, redemption, etc., game ** Arcade video game, a coin-operated video game ** Arcade cabinet, housing which holds an arcade video game's hardware ** Arcad ...

tile-matching A tile-matching video game is a type of puzzle video game where the player manipulates tiles in order to make them disappear according to a matching criterion. In many tile-matching games, that criterion is to place a given number of tiles of the ...

puzzle game A puzzle is a game, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, the solver is expected to put pieces together ( or take them apart) in a logical way, in order to find the solution of the puzzle. There are different ...

developed by

Mitchell Corporation Mitchell Corporation (株式会社ミッチェル) was a Japanese video game developer based in the Suginami ward of Tokyo. Roy Ozaki served as president, and Koichi Niida served as vice-president. Some employees were former Capcom and TAD Corpor ...

and released in 1998 in Japan and North America and 1999 in Europe. It was later ported to the

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PlayStation is a video gaming brand owned and produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), a division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. Its flagship products consists of a series of home video game consoles produced under the brand; it also consists ...

and

Samsung Samsung Group (; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturing Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous a ...

Nuon

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

players under the name ''Ballistic''. The original ''Puzz Loop'' game was also known by this title. In 2008, publisher

Hudson Soft was a Japanese video game company known for releasing numerous titles across video game consoles, home computers, and mobile phones. Headquartered in the Midtown Tower in Tokyo, it also maintained an office in the Hudson Building in Sapporo. F ...

released the game on

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for the

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and

iPod Touch The iPod Touch (stylized as iPod touch) is a discontinued line of iOS-based mobile devices designed and formerly marketed by Apple Inc. with a touchscreen-controlled user interface. As with other iPod models, the iPod Touch can be used as a po ...

. There was a

Neo Geo Pocket Color The Neo Geo Pocket series is a line of handheld game consoles developed and manufactured by SNK between 1998 and 2001. It began with the monochrome released in Japan on October 28, 1998 as SNK's first handheld system and a direct competitor to N ...

version of the game initially planned to be published by

SNK is a Japanese video gaming and interactive entertainment company. It was founded in 1978 as by Eikichi Kawasaki and began by developing arcade games. SNK is known for its Neo Geo arcade system on which the company established many franchises ...

, but cancelled due to bankruptcy of the original incarnation of the company. The original ''Puzz Loop'' was followed by a sequel, '' Puzz Loop 2'', in 2001.

Gameplay

In the game, marbles of different colors roll down a spiral path towards a central goal, which the player must stop by shooting new marbles using a cannon into the oncoming ones. The marbles disappear if player matches three or more marbles of the same color. In addition, collecting bonus items, for example, attached to marbles can temporarily slow down the rate the marbles advance or cause all the marbles of the same color to disappear. Once the marbles are pushed over the goal threshold, the game is over.

Reception

In Japan, ''Game Machine'' listed ''Puzz Loop'' on their March 1, 1999 issue as being the eight most-successful arcade game of the month. ''Game Machine'' also listed ''Puzz Loop 2'' on their April 1, 2001 issue as being the thirteenth most-successful arcade game of the month. Jeff Lundrigan reviewed the PlayStation version of the game for ''

Next Generation Next Generation or Next-Generation may refer to: Publications and literature * ''Next Generation'' (magazine), video game magazine that was made by the now defunct Imagine Media publishing company * Next Generation poets (2004), list of young ...

'', rating it four stars out of five, and stated that "OK, so it's an ultimately derivative action puzzler; but give it a shot and we guarantee you won't want to put it down."

Legacy

Sequel

''Puzz Loop 2'' is an

released in 2001 on

Capcom is a Japanese video game company. It has created a number of critically acclaimed and List of best-selling video game franchises, multi-million-selling game franchises, with its most commercially successful being ''Resident Evil'', ''Monster ...

CPS-2 The , also known as Capcom Play System 2 or CPS-2, is an arcade system board that was the successor to Capcom's CP System, CP System Dash and Capcom Power System Changer arcade hardware. It was first used in 1993 for ''Super Street Fighter II'' ...

hardware. Gameplay is exactly the same as its predecessor, with the player needing to deplete all the colored balls before they hit the center of the screen. The most popular feature of ''Puzz Loop 2'' was the two-player versus mode.

Clones

The success of ''Puzz Loop'' led to a number of

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with identical or nearly-identical gameplay from other companies including '' Zuma'', the ''

Luxor Luxor is a city in Upper Egypt. Luxor had a population of 263,109 in 2020, with an area of approximately and is the capital of the Luxor Governorate. It is among the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest continuously inhabited c ...

'' series, ''

Tumblebugs ''Tumblebugs'' is a fast-paced puzzle game developed by Wildfire Studios. It was released for a number of platforms, including Windows, Mac OS X, iOS and WiiWare. An updated version for Windows, Tumblebugs Remastered was released for sale in Apr ...

'', '' Potpourrii'', ''Butterfly Escape'', ''Loco'', ''Bonsai Blast'', and ''Bonbon Factory''. Mitchell alleges that ''Zuma'', one of the more popular clones, directly infringes on their intellectual property. In reply, ''Zuma'' developer PopCap Games asserts that their game is "not an exact clone", but an elaboration of Mitchell's original idea. Mitchell itself released a version of the game for the

Nintendo DS The is a foldable handheld game console produced by Nintendo, released globally across 2004 and 2005. The DS, an initialism for "Developers' System" or "Dual Screen", introduced distinctive new features to handheld games: two LCD screens worki ...

called ''

Magnetica ''Magnetica'' (known in Japanese as and in Europe as ''Actionloop'') is a puzzle video game developed by Mitchell Corporation and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS, released as part of the ''Touch! Generations'' series. It is based on Mi ...

'' in 2006. A

Wii The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America, and in December 2006 for most other regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major home game console, f ...

version of ''Magnetica'' was released via

WiiWare WiiWare was a digital media entertainment service operated by Nintendo that allowed the download of games and applications developed for the Wii video game console. These games and applications could only be purchased and downloaded from the W ...

in 2008.

References

External links

*{{KLOV game, id=9165 1998 video games Arcade video games Capcom games Game Boy Color games IOS games Marble video games Multiplayer and single-player video games Nuon games PlayStation (console) games SNK games Tile-matching video games Video games developed in Japan