''Swing'' is a computer puzzle game, released for the

PlayStation is a video gaming brand that consists of five home video game consoles, two handhelds, a media center, and a smartphone, as well as an online service and multiple magazines. The brand is produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment, a di ...

and PC, developed in

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...

by the now defunct

Software 2000 Software 2000 was a video game developer and publisher based in Germany. The company was formed in 1987 in Eutin, Schleswig-Holstein, by brothers Andreas and Marc Wardenga. They produced and published games for various formats, originally the ...

. The game was released in the US under the name ''Marble Master''. A downgraded version of the game was released for the Game Boy Color. Released in 1997, the object of the game is to score points by dropping balls onto sets of see-saws, in rows of three or more of the same colour. The twist, however, is that each ball has a different weight, determined by the number written on the front of it. The higher the number, the heavier the ball. This means that if a ball is placed onto one side of the see-saw which is heavier than the total value of the balls on the other side, the balance would be upset, sending the top ball flying across the playing field to land on another column. Cascade 'throws' can be achieved, and the game is over if a column reaches too tall. A variety of bonus balls, all with special uses, also feature.

Reception

In the UK, the ''

Official UK PlayStation Magazine An official is someone who holds an office (function or mandate, regardless whether it carries an actual working space with it) in an organization or government and participates in the exercise of authority, (either their own or that of their ...

'' gave the game 6 out of 10. According to them, the game was just 'another tetris clone'. The review also described the difficulty as perching "somewhere between the taxing and the brutal."

Legacy

In 1999, a sequel was released: ''Swing Plus: Total Mind Control''. The game was never released outside Germany. In 2008, a Java

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

remake A remake is a film, television series, video game, song or similar form of entertainment that is based upon and retells the story of an earlier production in the same medium—e.g., a "new version of an existing film". A remake tells the sa ...

was made named ''XSwing Plus'' and released under

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and

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. In 2015, a remake for Android made in

Unity3D Unity is a cross-platform game engine developed by Unity Technologies, first announced and released in June 2005 at Apple Worldwide Developers Conference as a Mac OS X game engine. The engine has since been gradually extended to support a varie ...

was released as ''Color-X-Plode''. One year later it was also released for iOS.

References

1997 video games DOS games Game Boy Color games Java platform games Marble games Multiplayer and single-player video games PlayStation (console) games Puzzle video games Software 2000 games Video games developed in Germany Windows games {{puzzle-videogame-stub