The late Gunpei Yokoi's last project in life was Bandai's WonderSwan portable, which he made after his departure from Nintendo post-Virtual Boy. Unfortunately, he did not survive to see his creation come to market, but the first game released for the WonderSwan, a puzzler, was named Gunpey in his honor. Seven years later, Q Entertainment (Meteos) has revived the game for the Nintendo DS—and the result is pretty good, if blemished by a few poor choices.
In Gunpey DS, panels marked with lines appear randomly on the bottom row as all other rows are pushed up. Your duty as player is to rearrange panels within their respective columns to form a continuous line from one end of the playfield to the other. Once you do this, the panels involved in the line begin "exploding", and in the few seconds after this you have the opportunity to increase the number of panels involved by branching or creating new lines. All panels involved count, and the more panels you can get going off at once, the higher your score. Simple enough, sound, and dare I say it, even creative!
The original Gunpey (and also the PlayStation Portable's Gunpey which released side-by-side with Gunpey DS) was controlled by the d-pad, using button-presses to swap panels, making moving a panel from the bottom to the top of the screen a "swap-up-swap-up-swap-up" affair. Gunpey DS offers this option in case you're feeling masochistic, but also gives you Meteos-style sliding of tiles using the stylus on the touch screen.
Using this method of play over the ancient-feeling d-pad-and-buttons solution strikes me as the recipe for unlocking the joy of Gunpey DS. Sliding the tiles into place with stylus swipes feels far more natural than the repeated taps of the face controls, and the efficiency of the method gives more opportunity to construct ever-more-elaborate line paths to manage a higher score.
Q also made one other important tweak to Gunpey's core mechanics: Break mode. Originally (and still optionally available), exploded lines would simply leave blank space in their wake. With Break mode, exploded lines leave a vacuum that tiles from above drop down to fill. Not only does this reduce the time spent managing tiles approaching the top of the screen, it also enables a brand-new combo mechanic: positioning tiles so they fall into a new line when the current line finishes exploding—very satisfying indeed.
While you're swiping away and building all sorts of crazy winding lines on the screen, Q steps in with their usual prowess to fulfill the first half of the game's "Music × Puzzle" subtitle, delivering all manner of gameplay-synced tunes ranging in quality from good to just plain awesome. Variations of the themes will take over if you do things like clear the entire board with one combo, or sometimes simply with time. The visual themes are another thing entirely. They certainly don't get in the way of my enjoyment of the game, but they do tend to range from the silly to the just plain weird. (They are, actually, an homage to the original WonderSwan game; however, finding someone on this continent who can appreciate that would simply prove quite difficult.)
To enjoy the widest variation of themed stages and, by extension, music, you'll need to go unlocking them. The only way you can do that is in Frontier mode, which you'll need to play a lot. Unfortunately, Frontier mode is about as weak as they come. Frontier pits you against random CPU-controlled characters in versus mode, where Gunpey falls pretty flat. No matter how well you do, you only seem to really affect your opponent via the setup of a big chain or the clearing of your playfield, both of which invoke a special attack. Special attacks in Gunpey DS generally fall into one of two categories: thoroughly lame, or ridiculously unfair. Most are in the former category, drawing out matches pointlessly; but some are in the latter, sometimes ending your long stretch of play abruptly.
Thankfully, once you actually have unlocked a selection of music, you can forget about Frontier and just play your stage of choice in the much more enjoyable Endless mode, or for those wanting a little more customization in their challenge, Stage Attack. Both modes offer a much more evenly paced game with no danger of a sudden disastrous end, and Endless offers the option of a fun Double mode where you manage two boards, swapping them with the tap of a button on the touch screen. Either mode is a winner; but I've found a game of Endless especially is just a fun way to spend 20-30 minutes.
Though it isn't something I'd put up against Meteos, Gunpey DS is a pretty good game that is regrettably marred pretty seriously by Q's insistence that we all must play lots of Frontier mode to get access to the full variety of music and stages in the far better game modes. It's sort of sad, in a way, that the system Gunpei Yokoi designed for Bandai wasn't enough to unlock the potential of this game design; it took seven years and a brand-new effort by the company he left to really give the game of Gunpey its due. Thankfully, we of today now have the opportunity to play it this way—and if you're looking for a solid all-around puzzler, Gunpey DS is a good choice.
In Gunpey DS, panels marked with lines appear randomly on the bottom row as all other rows are pushed up. Your duty as player is to rearrange panels within their respective columns to form a continuous line from one end of the playfield to the other. Once you do this, the panels involved in the line begin "exploding", and in the few seconds after this you have the opportunity to increase the number of panels involved by branching or creating new lines. All panels involved count, and the more panels you can get going off at once, the higher your score. Simple enough, sound, and dare I say it, even creative!
The original Gunpey (and also the PlayStation Portable's Gunpey which released side-by-side with Gunpey DS) was controlled by the d-pad, using button-presses to swap panels, making moving a panel from the bottom to the top of the screen a "swap-up-swap-up-swap-up" affair. Gunpey DS offers this option in case you're feeling masochistic, but also gives you Meteos-style sliding of tiles using the stylus on the touch screen.
Your excellent performance concerns this bizarre cat-woman.
Using this method of play over the ancient-feeling d-pad-and-buttons solution strikes me as the recipe for unlocking the joy of Gunpey DS. Sliding the tiles into place with stylus swipes feels far more natural than the repeated taps of the face controls, and the efficiency of the method gives more opportunity to construct ever-more-elaborate line paths to manage a higher score.
Q also made one other important tweak to Gunpey's core mechanics: Break mode. Originally (and still optionally available), exploded lines would simply leave blank space in their wake. With Break mode, exploded lines leave a vacuum that tiles from above drop down to fill. Not only does this reduce the time spent managing tiles approaching the top of the screen, it also enables a brand-new combo mechanic: positioning tiles so they fall into a new line when the current line finishes exploding—very satisfying indeed.
While you're swiping away and building all sorts of crazy winding lines on the screen, Q steps in with their usual prowess to fulfill the first half of the game's "Music × Puzzle" subtitle, delivering all manner of gameplay-synced tunes ranging in quality from good to just plain awesome. Variations of the themes will take over if you do things like clear the entire board with one combo, or sometimes simply with time. The visual themes are another thing entirely. They certainly don't get in the way of my enjoyment of the game, but they do tend to range from the silly to the just plain weird. (They are, actually, an homage to the original WonderSwan game; however, finding someone on this continent who can appreciate that would simply prove quite difficult.)
To enjoy the widest variation of themed stages and, by extension, music, you'll need to go unlocking them. The only way you can do that is in Frontier mode, which you'll need to play a lot. Unfortunately, Frontier mode is about as weak as they come. Frontier pits you against random CPU-controlled characters in versus mode, where Gunpey falls pretty flat. No matter how well you do, you only seem to really affect your opponent via the setup of a big chain or the clearing of your playfield, both of which invoke a special attack. Special attacks in Gunpey DS generally fall into one of two categories: thoroughly lame, or ridiculously unfair. Most are in the former category, drawing out matches pointlessly; but some are in the latter, sometimes ending your long stretch of play abruptly.
While the line is exploding, you can play on the other screen.
Thankfully, once you actually have unlocked a selection of music, you can forget about Frontier and just play your stage of choice in the much more enjoyable Endless mode, or for those wanting a little more customization in their challenge, Stage Attack. Both modes offer a much more evenly paced game with no danger of a sudden disastrous end, and Endless offers the option of a fun Double mode where you manage two boards, swapping them with the tap of a button on the touch screen. Either mode is a winner; but I've found a game of Endless especially is just a fun way to spend 20-30 minutes.
Though it isn't something I'd put up against Meteos, Gunpey DS is a pretty good game that is regrettably marred pretty seriously by Q's insistence that we all must play lots of Frontier mode to get access to the full variety of music and stages in the far better game modes. It's sort of sad, in a way, that the system Gunpei Yokoi designed for Bandai wasn't enough to unlock the potential of this game design; it took seven years and a brand-new effort by the company he left to really give the game of Gunpey its due. Thankfully, we of today now have the opportunity to play it this way—and if you're looking for a solid all-around puzzler, Gunpey DS is a good choice.