Regrettably, it seems Q Entertainment, now custodians of the game, don't appreciate what a gem they have got in their stable. They seem to appreciate Lumines, for the most part; why in the name of Yamauchi is it so hard for them to get Meteos right?
I picked up Meteos again by chance this weekend. It was a pretty depressing weekend, with a turtle-slow storm system meeting up with remnants of Lowell and Ike, leaving us with gray skies and pretty much constant rain for three straight days. It seemed nothing could break the dreary spell hanging over my head, but Meteos did just that. Its combination of Q Entertainment's audiovisual mastery with Sakurai's gameplay and understanding of what it takes to totally engage even the fastest of minds in furious challenge.
I still remember when it debuted, in its original form, for Nintendo DS. Perhaps we were all clinging to it a little too tightly back then, as a rare example of a game that really got the then-underappreciated touchable wonder, but even today it's pretty obvious that it was a pretty sweet game. On the N-Sider Forums, we spent countless hours battling each other in tedious-to-update high score threads. Working to beat those scores could almost leave one breathless. It was the perfect combination of three key elements: game design in the rapid-fire blocks raining down on you, control enabled by the touch screen giving you the ability to react, and theme tying it all together, setting your heart racing. Without any one of these elements, you just don't have Meteos.
Since Sakurai originally conceptualized the title, Q has been in control of the game. Now, I can perhaps forgive them from a business standpoint—it seems that it's difficult as all hell to convince a publisher to back a non-kid-licensed, somewhat original title in these days—but their efforts to put it on cell phones, DS with Disney branding (though, gameplay-wise, that one was actually decent, theme aside), and now the latest incarnation on XBLA seems... aimless. They keep losing sight of the three key elements, undermining one or more every time they come out with a new version of the game.
What's saddest about all this is that there was one key way they could have improved solidly on the original, one way that's been pretty well-clamored for since the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection debuted: adding online play. If you've never had the chance to play Meteos against a friend, you're really missing out. I miss out a lot, as I have a total of one local friend who will even try to play Meteos with me. The XBLA version is bringing this, now, but it's missing the key of the control option. I've tried to play both standard Meteos with the d-pad and the phone version. Stripping the grab-and-slide stylus control out of the game turns it from a masterpiece into a merely serviceable title.
Here's what you could do if you really, really wanted to make me happy, Q. Bring Sakurai back, just for a little bit of input; it doesn't have to be a huge gig. See if he approves of the side-sliding that you've added, and if he has any other great ideas. Wrap those up in a package with the original 32 planets and 32 new ones, selectable old-school/new-school game modes, throw it online so I can bury friends and anonymous-types, and put it on the DS (or, at the very least, on WiiWare, where we've got a pointer to grab and slide with). Call it Meteos 2. I promise I will be there day one, and you just might remind some people why they loved the game so much in the first place.