Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is the long awaited release from Capcom and developed by Backbone onto Xbox Live Arcade. Considered a mid-90s classic, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo can still snatch a pretty penny on eBay for the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, Sega Dreamcast and PC versions of the game. Now you can have a graphically updated version on Xbox Live Arcade for just $10.
Capcom made the brilliant calculation that Street Fighter II was such a hot property back in the 90s that the company decided to create a game that was similar to the classic Tetris, but different enough that it would stand out. Then Capcom put in super deformed characters from the Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Darkstalker and other Capcom games that would be the visual representation of unleashing a can of whoop ass on your opponent.
Instead of the different shaped blocks from Tetris, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo uses two gems for each release. Each gem is color coded blue, red, yellow or green. The idea is to combine like colors together to form power gems (gems of four in a square or higher) and then drop a like color “crash gem”, a glowing colored gem, onto gems of the same color to make any gem connected to it of the same color disappear, creating chains. Every 25th gem that comes down is a diamond that can be dropped on any color to eliminate all of those colored gems on the screen. It sounds easy enough, but you are also battling against an opponent that is doing the same thing. Every time a gem or a chain of gems is eliminated, the gems that disappear are then dropped on the other side, which effectively screws up what the other is doing unless you plan ahead. Once the gems hit the top of the screen the game or round is over.
There is strategy involved in how you drop gems in Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix because each player has a certain gem dump pattern that you see when your opponent is chosen from the character select screen. If you remember the pattern, especially how the colors go on the bottom row, you can set up “crash gems” to take out the gems that are dropped on you. Once the timer on each gem reaches zero it will change and the crash gems will do their work and hopefully dump a bunch of gems on your opponent.
The above constitutes the X and X’ game modes but there are also the Y and Z game modes as well. Y is set up much like the Sega game Columns where all it takes is for you to have three gems horizontal, vertical or diagonal to make them disappear. Z mode actually has gems build up from the bottom and you try to eliminate them by taking a 2x2 square and spinning the gems around to take out the like colored gems.
The best time you can spend when learning the game is playing at home with a friend or loved one. Once you feel confident with how you play the game, you can dip your foot in the water of online play and hope that there is not a skilled person that knows a lot about the game to play against. Watching people whip pieces down and create power gems with seemingly no thought at all is quite humbling and doesn’t make for a very fun experience. If you have a lot of friends on your Xbox Live list that are not as skilled, playing online can be enjoyable until you get good enough to take on the masters.
There is a glaring problem with the game that many people pointed out right after release: Backbone/Capcom did not update the character sprites to HD caliber like they did the actual gameplay graphics with the gems and explosions. The characters in fact are very blurry in their appearance and it is especially noticeable when they do a super move when a multiple chain combo is done.
In the end this game is a lot of fun, even if you play it alone. This is a more expensive game than most Xbox Live Arcade releases. The graphical updates, online play and extra modes from the original release more than make up for the $10 price.
