(ぷよぷよＤＡ！フィーチャリング　エレナ・システム)

Maker - Compile   Catalogue No. - T-6601M

Type - Dance Game

This is an odd game if ever there was one.  Back in the late 90's Japan was having it's Music game boom thanks to the likes of Konami's Beatmania series and Dance Dance Revolution as well as Sega's Samba De Amigo and many cheap rip offs by Namco and Jaleco.  So Compile probably thought it was a good idea to jump on to the bandwagon but what could they use?  They really only had two main franchises which were Puyo Puyo and Aleste.  Now a music game staring some space ships would have just been too odd so Compile went with the Puyo Puyo idea. The result is a very mixed dancing game featuring 7 characters from the Puyo Puyo Series and Ellena who first appeared in a game back in 1994 which Puyo Puyo DA ! is based on.

The game plays pretty much like how Dance Dance Revolution plays in that you have to push the direction on the pad according the the way the arrow is facing as it slides over the marker.  However this is probably the only likeness it does have to Konami's game.  You see, the player only controls every other line while the computer does the other.  This is so you are actually battling it out to see who is the best dancer.  Managing to pull off a better dance than the computer will dump a load of puyos over his / her head just waiting to be dropped on to him / her.  Unfortunately the actual button presses to the music don't actually follow the music's beat that well which leaves you slightly confused at times.  The music is a mixture of Puyo Puyo remixed themes and a few vocal tracks taken from various Puyo Puyo games.  The music isn't that bad really but with only 8 or so tunes you do become tired rather quickly.

Over all it's a nice enough game but be warned that it is quite easy or at least it is to me.  I finished the game on all three level settings on my second go.  True I used an easy character because the hard characters are just insane.