Falling-Block Puzzles

Tetris was a game of stacking alone, but Japan brought in an opponent. Puyo Puyo (1991, Compile) connects four blocks of the same color to clear them, and chaining clears sends that many junk blocks down onto the opponent's screen -- an invention that turned falling blocks into a duel. Panel de Pon (1995) went the other way, swapping blocks in place to line them up and clear them. Its North American release was renamed Tetris Attack, with the characters swapped for Yoshi and friends -- the game underneath stayed the same, only the name and the faces changed clothes crossing the ocean. The assumption that puzzle games are something you play quietly, alone, comes undone for a while in this current.