The year is 2002. My family of five - plus myself - is packed into my bedroom because it h𓄧as the bean bag chairs. We are in hour four of what will end up b🐼eing an all-day gaming tournament, and it won’t be the last of that summer.
The game? Pokémon Puzzle League.
What could be the most forgotten and underappreciated 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:gem of the Nintendo 64, Pokémon Puzzle League was one of the bottom blocks of the Jenga tower that is my life. Here’s how the game works, because let’s face it - you pr𝔍obably ღdidn’t play it.
In a head-to-head style competition, two players try to best one another by matching up and clearing out the Kanto badge inspired tiles on their half of the screen as fast and efficient as they can manage. The first one to have their screen fill up is a big loser. It’s a lot like Tetris but with fewer shapes to choose from.
There is also a delicious element of sabotage to the game, if you link togeth💦er four or more tiles a brick the length of the screen falls on your opponent. The only way to clear the bricks is to create a combo directly u🌞nderneath, but they don’t just go away—they turn in to more tiles, which will work to either your or their determent. More tiles means more chances for big combos, after all. There are different difficulties you can play at, which make the tiles rise faster and faster, and even a 3D mode where you have to rotate your screen to keep things in line.
Related: Pokém🦩on Puzzle ♏League: 5 Reasons We Need A Sequel (& 5 Reasons We Don't)
There’s a whole separate story mode, too, where you battle through the Puzz🌠le League Tournament and end up fighting Mewtwo, but a family with four kids has no time for story mode.
Unlike Pokémon Stadium, or really any other Pokémon game that comes immediately to mind, you can play as any of the trainers from Pokémon's early days—168澳洲幸运5开奖网:including the Elite Four. There are no special power-ups based on which character you choose, it all comes down to pr𓂃eference. My go to character was Lorelei.
For me, one of the best parts of playing Pokémon Puzzle League is that, for the first time, I was on the same playing field as my three older brothers, who are six, eight, and ten years older than me. I panicked any time we played Halo, they cleaned my clock with their combos in Super Smash Bros., I was the punching bag in Mario Kart, but Pokémon Puzzle League was about matching and being quick about it. I was never the champion—because my second brother was a genius and a speed demon, and hജe took after my mom—but I stood a chance at the top three every time.
There’s preloaded trash talk between rivals, to supplement whatever was flying out of my brothers’ mouths at the time. These tournaments got intense. Like, Mario Party intense. We were toggling around our rectangles so fast my last brother started to fear for the integrity of our joysticks. Growing up in Arizona, where the summers (and half of the fall and most of the spring) come with staggering heat, video games were essential to our family bonding time growing up. Pokémon Puzzle League was the one video gam♔e my dad would play with us, and even after the kids left the house my parents played together, flinging a playful “𓃲you suck!” at each other whenever particularly hefty combo was played.
Pokémon Puzzle League was some of the best family fun of my childhood and something I wish more peo🐷ple could re🍬late to as a staple of the early 2000s.