N +

Red Red Black Yellow
Remember those colors when you are finished reading this weeks (day-late) Retro-Review:
Dr. Robotniks Mean Bean Machine!

DR.RMBM is a puzzle game that was created by Compile, a company that was going bankrupt and lost the basic games copyrights to both Sega AND Nintendo. If you have ever played Kirby's Avalanche, it's the same exact game, save for the music and characters. Sega however was able to claim all the copyright to the original games concept, which was Puyo Puyo. Today we all know the Puyo Puyo series is alive and kickin'.

DR.RMBM follows the same rules as Puyo Puyo in the fact that you have colored "beans" that fall from the top to the bottom Tetris-style where they will rest. You can move the two falling beans left or right with the D-Pad, and use the face buttons to rotate the combination of two colored beans. The falling beans sometimes are teh same color, and sometimes they are not. Whenever you connect four beans of the same color they explode, let all the beans on top of them fall lower, and send clear beans to your opponents screen. The clear beans get in the way of your resting beans and your falling colored beans, preventing you from connecting them. Whenever you create a four colored explosion that happens to be touching the clear beans, they will go away as well.

While you play you try to create "kinetic combos" using the beans stacks. For instance lets say your bottom level is three yellow beans covered with a second blue layer, and one yellow bean on top of the blue layer. If you are to connect a fourth blue bean they will explode dropping the fourth yellow bean onto the three others causing a second explosion, resulting in alot more clear beans being dropped onto your opponents screen. Whenever you just have one explosion the result is one clear bean, however if you make one combo, you get a full row of clear beans. The more combos, the more rows.

Defeating your enemy (human or cpu) requires a balance of creating awesome combos, and single explosions. If you take too much time creating a combo, the opponent may unleash a smaller combo on you crippling your first color trigger. So, sometimes you want to just get smaller combos out of the way so you can cripple your enemy before they get you. However the clear beans can be used as a sort of wild card, you can rest a specific color on top of the clear bean and destroy the clear bean with another 4-bean explosion resulting in a new link to a higher combo chain.

The game starts off super easy, and quickly rises in intensity and difficulty. Single player mode is great, but the best is when your are playing with a friend. This game EASILY can keep you up to the Wii hours of mourning when played with a partner, and surely causes alot of funny-foul language, that usually no one takes offence to. Continuing is free everytime you die in one player mode, and if you get tired you simply enter the last "code" they showed you before you started the current level. The codes are made using the colored beans from the main menu. " "

N+: Get this game now, or wait 'till Kirby's Avalanche, either way, just get it! 8/10

Cost: 800 Wii Points

- Captain Seagull