Puzzle Fighter is a puzzle game which is similar to the Sega arcade game Baku Baku Animal.[1] As in the Capcom arcade game Pnickies, the player controls pairs of blocks ("gems" in game parlance) that drop into a pit-like playfield (twelve blocks tall by six blocks wide, with the fourth column from the left being thirteen blocks high). In Puzzle Fighter, however, gems can only be eliminated by coming into contact with a Crash Gem of the same color, which eliminates all adjacent gems of that color, setting up the potential for huge chain reactions. When gems are eliminated, "garbage blocks" called Counter Gems drop into the opponent's playfield; these will eventually become normal gems, but only after they count down to zero. Most Counter Gems start at "5" and are reduced by one each time a new pair of gems is dropped on that board. The only way to eliminate Counter Gems before they become normal gems is to place a Crash Gem of that color nearby so it eliminates at least one normal gem. If this is done, all Counter Gems immediately adjacent to the Crash Gem will be taken out as well. Additionally, gems of the same color that form squares or rectangles (of at least two blocks tall and wide) in the pit become a giant Power Gem of that size and color; eliminating these as part of a combo increases the number of Counter Gems that would otherwise normally appear on the opponent's board. The only other type of piece to appear is a diamond, which eliminates all the gems—normal, Power, Counter, and Crash alike—of whichever color gem it lands on. (This, too, will cause Counter Gems to appear on the opponent's board. The diamond is supposed to create half the number of Counter Gems as a normal chain reaction. However, there is a bug that allows players to bypass this reduction.[11]) The diamond piece appears every 25 pieces.
Puzzle Fighter borrowed rules originally found in Puyo Puyo 2 called Sousai (Garbage Countering). This will allow a player to counter and negate garbage being sent by the opponent with chains of their own. Sousai can also be used to send garbage back to the opponent, known as Garbage overflow.
アーケード版は発売時に好評を博した。Next Generationのレビュアーはアーケード版をレビューし、 「ゲームプレイは猛烈に競争的で、不公平なほど中毒性があり、(コツさえ掴めば)自転車に乗るのと同じくらい直感的だ。運の要素もあるため、最後の宝石が落ちるまで勝者と敗者の間で何度も優劣が揺れ動く」とコメントした。さらに、可愛らしいキャラクターアートや、背景やサウンドトラックに組み込まれたカプコンの内輪ネタを称賛し、5つ星中4つ星の評価を与えた。[ 27 ] Computer and Video Games はテトリスやコラムスと比較して好意的だったが、「大きな違いは、同じ色の宝石を正方形にすると、それが合体して巨大なボーナス宝石になる点だ」と述べた。そして、「これほど楽しいのだから、試してみる価値は十分ある」と評した。[ 33 ]
On June 10, 2019, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix was released on Xbox One through backwards compatibility support of the original Xbox 360 version.
Several characters were rebalanced by having their gem drop patterns altered.
Crash Gems now have elemental visual effects associated with them. Red gems are now Fire, Green gems are Wind, Blue gems are Water and Yellow gems are Lightning. This does not affect gameplay and is purely a visual alteration.
In the original Puzzle Fighter, the tempo of the music would gradually speed up the closer the player or their opponent was to losing the match. HD Remix does not feature this.
In addition to the standard difficulty selection (Easy, Normal, and Hard), home console ports of Puzzle Fighter let the player alter the default speed in which gems would fall (marked by a number of stars up to five). This setting was removed for HD Remix.
New game modes were added. X is the original Puzzle Fighter with original drop patterns, X' is the rebalanced version, Y is a connect-three based variant of the game, and Z is a completely different pre-generated rotating block style game.
A challenge mode called "Street Puzzle" was available in the original home console ports of Puzzle Fighter. In it, the player was tasked with defeating specific characters as a means to unlock bonus content. HD Remix removes "Street Puzzle" mode entirely, as well as most of the bonus content it would unlock. What little bonus content was not cut from HD Remix is available from the beginning of the game.
Dan's "Saikyo-Ryu Dojo" Tutorial has been removed, which was an "Attract" demo in the arcade version and a tutorial mode accessible from the main menu in previous home releases. In it, Dan would provide a comedic demonstration to show the player the basics of playing Puzzle Fighter. In HD Remix, it has been replaced with a four-page text-only tutorial under "How to Play" in Options.
The original Puzzle Fighter contained a number of different "Win Taunts" that a character would pick at random to say to the losing player after a match. HD Remix removes most of the "Win Taunts", leaving only one per character.
There are a number of palette errors in the sprites themselves. For example, during the Intermission featuring Akuma in his cave, all of the demons in the background have garbled colors.