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Panel de Pon is FINALLY on Switch & I couldn't be happier

Jawmuncher

Jawmuncher

Crisis Dino
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
35,185
Ibis Island


Despite really liking action games, I have a big soft spot for puzzle titles. While I can't get into all of them (RIP Puyo Puyo, you're too hard for me). Some games like Tetris and Dr. Mario just hit that sweet spot of complexity while still being easy enough to get into. Another game that belongs in that category is Panel de Pon (Known as Tetris Attack/Puzzle League for most of us in the west).

I absolutely adore the PdP styling over the generic "Puzzle League" style, so to finally see it released in the west without being scrubbed of all its original charm is simply amazing to me. Sure it might be missing a translation, but that's a small price to pay to finally HAVE portable Panel De Pon on a system since the DS (3DS if we count it being in AC:NL). It being "free" with Nintendo Online just sweetens the deal.

If you have Nintendo Online i'd recommend checking it out. It might become your new addiction in-between the other titles you'll be playing on your switch in the coming months. Not to mention the online capabilities opens up a lot of new doors as well (I might be down for some matches if my internet is up to it)!

Who knows, maybe the engagement might even get us Panel de Pon 99 or something (don't ask me how that would work, I just want more PdP) Had to stop myself from using PP as an abbreviation lol

So yeah, Happy Panel De Pon Switch Day!

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aiswyda

aiswyda

Member
Aug 11, 2018
3,079
Is this available on all the NSO options or only certain regions? it looks like a lot of fun!
 

FormatCompatible

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,071
Agree with everything. It's my favorite puzzle game in both gameplay and presentation, and to be able to finally play it on the Switch makes me really happy too.
 
Giga Man

Giga Man

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 27, 2017
20,467
Now if only Nintendo would make this again...


Nintendo_Puzzle_Collection_Boxart.jpg


As far as I know, this is the only version of the Puzzle League formula with 4-player VS. I really wish this got localized. If they remastered this, they can add Wario's Woods and Kirby's Star Stacker to it, too.
 
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Efejota

Efejota

Member
Mar 13, 2018
3,750
I wish Nintendo would be willing to do something more with these characters since I think they would be better received now, but Puzzle games always get a really low budget these days, besides Picross 3D Round 2.

They could even add some male fairies with Splatoon-like hairstyles.

Anyways, now we only need Kirby Super Stacker.
 

doublejon

Member
Jan 10, 2018
53
Honestly Pokemon Puzzle League/Tetris Attack is probably top of my list for my favorite game of all time. I’ve been begging for a Switch version and I’m so happy it’s here. Still hoping for a Puzzle League 99 somehow. I was really hoping there would be a version in Animal Crossing but this is probably better tbh.
 

doublejon

Member
Jan 10, 2018
53
Erekiddo said:
What makes this differ from Tetris Attack? Just different character skins?
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As far as I know, yeah. Same game just turned into a Yoshi game outside of Japan. I’m assuming it’s just easier for Nintendo to release this version instead of having to deal with a potential Tetris licensing issue
 
Why would you do that?

Why would you do that?

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,519
New York City
Leo said:
Pokemon Puzzle Challenge is the best Panel de Pon, fight me.
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The Game Boy Color game? I played it recently, and it's surprisingly good.

I was especially surprised with the game because Pokemon Puzzle League is a US only game taking inspiration from the US Pokemon anime dub, developed in the US. So I thought that Pokemon Puzzle Challenge would be a GBC version of that. However, it's actually developed by Intelligent Systems, and it takes inspiration from Pokemon Gold and Silver, and is an entirely different experience.

It's also much better and way more enhanced than the previous Game Boy Tetris Attack.

(I still like the SNES and GameCube versions better though lol.)
 
Laser Ramon

Laser Ramon

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,567
I love the Puzzle League games but I’ve yet to play the non-Yoshified original. Let’s fuckin’ go
 
Efejota

Efejota

Member
Mar 13, 2018
3,750
Leo said:
Pokemon Puzzle Challenge is the best Panel de Pon, fight me.
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The only problem I have with this game is that it's just too difficult. I think there's some type advantages going on, but even when doing countless chains in a battle I can only drag my defeat for several minutes.

Giga Man said:
To be fair, each Puyo has a unique shape too. You just have to remember how each of them look when they're linked together.
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You can buy different shapes to use in Puyo iirc. There were some in shapes of letters or as Sonic's friends.

Solid SOAP said:
Such a weird licensing decision on their part. The game isn't even Tetris, why label it as such? How is Yoshi associated with Tetris?

"Yoshi's Puzzle League" was too tough of a name to come up with?
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They just wanted to bring in the tetris sales, but it killed a bit the identity of the franchise in the process. Puyo Puyo suffered the same fate with Kirby's Avalanche and Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine.
 
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Kouriozan

Kouriozan

Member
Oct 25, 2017
19,399
Love Panel de Pon so much, Nintendo need to rerelease the gamecube game here. It sadden me they don’t try to make it more popular, it has so much potential.
I remember training so hard especially on PdP SNES because it was faster than Tetris Attack, in addition to a harder campaign. When you finally can do 4+ chains easily, it’s the best feeling.
Selene has my favorite theme!

 
Solid SOAP

Solid SOAP

One Winged Slayer
Member
Nov 27, 2017
7,005
doublejon said:
As far as I know, yeah. Same game just turned into a Yoshi game outside of Japan. I’m assuming it’s just easier for Nintendo to release this version instead of having to deal with a potential Tetris licensing issue
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Such a weird licensing decision on their part. The game isn't even Tetris, why label it as such? How is Yoshi associated with Tetris?

"Yoshi's Puzzle League" was too tough of a name to come up with?
 
sixteen-bit

sixteen-bit

Member
Oct 30, 2017
3,678
Quite
Giga Man said:
Now if only Nintendo would make this again...


Nintendo_Puzzle_Collection_Boxart.jpg


As far as I know, this is the only version of the Puzzle League formula with 4-player VS. I really wish this got localized. If they remastered this, they can add Wario's Woods and Kirby's Star Stacker to it, too.
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Yeah I'm bummed at the bolded. This is from a Summer 2003 GameCube sales brochure, and it looked like localization would have been a lock. I wonder what changed.

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Solid SOAP

Solid SOAP

One Winged Slayer
Member
Nov 27, 2017
7,005
Efejota said:
They just wanted to bring in the tetris sales, but it killed a bit the identity of the franchise in the process. Puyo Puyo suffered the same fate with Kirby's Avalanche and Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine.
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This is also a weird one. I noticed that the games were literally exactly the same as a kid and did not know why.

Branding your puzzle game has gotta be a challenge. No one buys these for the story, really, so how do you differentiate from other products? Slapping popular pre-existing branding seems the most popular answer to that question, haha.
 
StreamedHams

StreamedHams

Member
Nov 21, 2017
3,866
I’m assuming there’s not English option?
Tetris attack is the absolute best on the SNES...having this is great.
 

Nuclear Muffin

Banned
Oct 29, 2017
4,721
Why would you do that? said:
The Game Boy Color game? I played it recently, and it's surprisingly good.

I was especially surprised with the game because Pokemon Puzzle League is a US only game taking inspiration from the US Pokemon anime dub, developed in the US. So I thought that Pokemon Puzzle Challenge would be a GBC version of that. However, it's actually developed by Intelligent Systems, and it takes inspiration from Pokemon Gold and Silver, and is an entirely different experience.

It's also much better and way more enhanced than the previous Game Boy Tetris Attack.

(I still like the SNES and GameCube versions better though lol.)
Click to expand...
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Pokemon Puzzle League is not strictly a US developed game... It is actually a localised version of the cancelled Panel de Pon 64. NST were given the cancelled game and we’re tasked with adding the Pokémon anime skin on top. You can actually visibly see which parts of the game were originally developed by IS and which parts were NST (look at how janky and poorly coded all the menus are, and then the gameplay itself is silky smooth; there are two entirely different engines being slammed together here).

Panel de Pon 64 would actually eventually see a release... in Nintendo Puzzle Collection! The version of PDP in that collection is actually the previously unreleased PDP64!

On top of that mystery is another... Nintendo Puzzle Collection was originally due to have a fully localised western release, including PDP64 itself! With the original characters intact!

You can actually find a remnant of this cancelled localisation in the Dr Mario & Puzzle League GBA release! The Download Demo option in GBA Puzzle League is actually the original GBA Download version of PDP that was also included in Nintendo Puzzle Collection; completely unaltered... except it’s entirely in English now. Pupuri still hosts the game and still makes reference to Furil and the rest of his fairy friends from PDP64!

Really fascinating to see what was going to be! Damn shame that they cancelled NPC’s western release... I bet that they still have the fully localised English GCN release hiding in their vaults, just like what happened with StarFox 2...
 
BGBW

BGBW

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,008
Solid SOAP said:
Such a weird licensing decision on their part. The game isn't even Tetris, why label it as such? How is Yoshi associated with Tetris?

"Yoshi's Puzzle League" was too tough of a name to come up with?
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Back in the day Tetris was a big brand name for block puzzle games, plus there were other games at the time with the Tetris name that didn't follow the standard Tetris rules like Tetris 2 so Joe Public was kind of used to seeing Tetris spinoffs. Heck, the Yoshi element isn't even shown on the front of box, instead with the focus entirely on it being another block puzzle game. It bit them in the arse in the long term, but it's understandable why they would have been keen to use the Tetris name back in the day. Puzzle League wasn't even a thing back then.
 
Solid SOAP

Solid SOAP

One Winged Slayer
Member
Nov 27, 2017
7,005
BGBW said:
Back in the day Tetris was a big brand name for block puzzle games, plus there were other games at the time with the Tetris name that didn't follow the standard Tetris rules like Tetris 2 so Joe Public was kind of used to seeing Tetris spinoffs. Heck, the Yoshi element isn't even shown on the front of box, instead with the focus entirely on it being another block puzzle game. It bit them in the arse in the long term, but it's understandable why they would have been keen to use the Tetris name back in the day. Puzzle League wasn't even a thing back then.
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Makes sense, just odd is all.
 
Nose Master

Nose Master

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,581
Having repaid both extensively lately, its wild how wide the gulf is between ta and ppl. Ppl is perfection. I used to go to bat hard for tetris attack, but the lag makes it feel like an entirely different game.
 
MaitreWakou

MaitreWakou

One Winged Slayer
Avenger
May 15, 2018
13,178
Toulouse, France
I hoped for a proper new "free" game for online members, like Tetris 99, that would let you chose between Panel de Pon style, Yoshi style, Animal Crossing style, etc, with a versus mode for (at least) 4 players, but that's dope too.
First official Panel De Pon release, as in not Tetris Attack etc, in the west. That's huge. Lip can be in Smash now :p
 

rawhide

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,994
Nuclear Muffin said:
You can actually visibly see which parts of the game were originally developed by IS and which parts were NST (look at how janky and poorly coded all the menus are, and then the gameplay itself is silky smooth; there are two entirely different engines being slammed together here).
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That's true but PdP GC also has a ton of bugs that aren't in PPL, so it cuts both ways.
 
NotLiquid

NotLiquid

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
32,580
While the Tetris Attack version has a great amount of charm to it I will forever bear a small grudge against it for supplanting Panel De Pon in the west which was likely a big part of the reason Sakurai eschewed including Lip in Smash.

Truly Yoshi's greatest crime.
 
Gold Arsene

Gold Arsene

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
30,757
I'm glad Puyo didn't have to keep rebranding to get western releases. Hope Panel de Pon might be able to return as well.

I didn't even realize just how many there were till I saw this video.
 
-shadow-

-shadow-

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,110
Just did seven rounds online with a good friend, the garbage combos we were sending towards one another. It's hilarious and I'm so excited!
 
LSauchelli

LSauchelli

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,031
I wish Nintendo would remove the Tetris name from Tetris Attack and release that instead. It's just the title screen!

But Panel de Pon is excellent, too.
 
Why would you do that?

Why would you do that?

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,519
New York City
Nuclear Muffin said:
Pokemon Puzzle League is not strictly a US developed game... It is actually a localised version of the cancelled Panel de Pon 64. NST were given the cancelled game and we’re tasked with adding the Pokémon anime skin on top. You can actually visibly see which parts of the game were originally developed by IS and which parts were NST (look at how janky and poorly coded all the menus are, and then the gameplay itself is silky smooth; there are two entirely different engines being slammed together here).

Panel de Pon 64 would actually eventually see a release... in Nintendo Puzzle Collection! The version of PDP in that collection is actually the previously unreleased PDP64!

On top of that mystery is another... Nintendo Puzzle Collection was originally due to have a fully localised western release, including PDP64 itself! With the original characters intact!

You can actually find a remnant of this cancelled localisation in the Dr Mario & Puzzle League GBA release! The Download Demo option in GBA Puzzle League is actually the original GBA Download version of PDP that was also included in Nintendo Puzzle Collection; completely unaltered... except it’s entirely in English now. Pupuri still hosts the game and still makes reference to Furil and the rest of his fairy friends from PDP64!

Really fascinating to see what was going to be! Damn shame that they cancelled NPC’s western release... I bet that they still have the fully localised English GCN release hiding in their vaults, just like what happened with StarFox 2...
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Thanks for this awesome post, that's all fascinating information that somehow I didn't know. Now I'm incredibly curious about how much of the cancelled N64 game made its way into the GameCube game. Seeing how the credits of the GC game has a lot of NST names in it, I would imagine they significantly overhauled it.

I should check out the development history of the rest of Nintendo Puzzle Collection (Dr. Mario 64 and Yoshi's Cookie) since I thought all the games on it were NST developed... Too bad it didn't come to America, but at least it's an easy import title.
 
Crashman

Crashman

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,390
Oh baby, its finally here.

While Pokemon Puzzle League may be better in most respects, I still love Tetris Attack just for the aesthetics. Now these are fairy characters I don't know, but it's still got that sweet sweet music. Like I'd prefer the Yoshi skin, but I'm still happy to get the original.

Wish some of the menu text would have been translated though.
 
GeekyDad

GeekyDad

Banned
Nov 11, 2017
1,689
USA
Been playing almost nothing but match-3-type games here lately, and I love the adorable look of this. Glad for the heads-up.
 
-shadow-

-shadow-

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,110
People claiming Pokémon Puzzle League is the best... Never seen so much wrong when Tetris Attack is still a thing...

Edge said:
Wait, we have new Nintendo Online SNES games? Have I missed a thread about that?
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No, no one gives a rat's arse about the service, so no one bothered. But Panel De Pon/Puzzle League finally being available is what got people excited.
 
Solid SOAP

Solid SOAP

One Winged Slayer
Member
Nov 27, 2017
7,005
Gold Arsene said:
I'm glad Puyo didn't have to keep rebranding to get western releases. Hope Panel de Pon might be able to return as well.

I didn't even realize just how many there were till I saw this video.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Hate to be the barer of bad news:

kirbysavalanche.png
latest


Luckily that didn't stop them from making actual Puyo games in the future though!
 

rawhide

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,994
Why would you do that? said:
Thanks for this awesome post, that's all fascinating information that somehow I didn't know. Now I'm incredibly curious about how much of the cancelled N64 game made its way into the GameCube game. Seeing how the credits of the GC game has a lot of NST names in it, I would imagine they significantly overhauled it.

I should check out the development history of the rest of Nintendo Puzzle Collection (Dr. Mario 64 and Yoshi's Cookie) since I thought all the games on it were NST developed... Too bad it didn't come to America, but at least it's an easy import title.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The other parts of Nintendo Puzzle Collection were by Tose, developers of DM64. The version of Yoshi's Cookie on the collection is new. and when you look at it side-by-side with the other games it's clearly a higher-res game.

Pokemon Puzzle Challenge for GBC was also supposed to be a PdP game: there's a ton of PdP data still in the ROM, enough to suggest it must have been pretty much done before they reskinned it, and you can even enter a debug code to unlock a black-and-white PdP demo.

www.youtube.com

Panel De Pon GB - Pokemon Puzzle Challenge Easter Egg

Inside Pokemon Puzzle Challenge, for the GBC, is an entire second game. A rough, prototypical game but it's there nonetheless. The game is Panel De Pon, a SN...
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
 
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