44. Lot Lot (HAL Laboratory, Famicom, 1985)
Lot Lot is the Famicom port of an (also) 1985 arcade puzzle game from Irem.
The gameplay consists of moving balls around cells in a 4x4 grid, trying to make them fall into various holes to accrue points. The hole at the bottom left of the field will attract a crab if there are any balls in it, and if the crab manages to take a ball, you lose a life.
Periodically, the walls of the grid will flash and then disappear, either allowing balls to fall to a lower level, or allowing them to mix with a cell on the left or right. The only way for the player to relocate the balls is to use the twin cursors, which is where the game starts to get interesting. You control the 2 cursors simultaneously, with one on an approximately 4 second delay. When the 2 cursors are over 2 different cells, you can press the A button to swap the contents of those cells.
Early on, this is fairly simple and straightforward: you are just moving balls from the top / left of the screen over to the right side so that they can fall into the 50 point hole. But once more balls start coming and the walls of the grid start turning off more frequently, the game quickly becomes a brain-twisting mess where you need to constantly think about not only where you are going, but where you have been, and what is currently changing. Just like misplacing a block in Tetris, the game quickly becomes about avoiding and fixing your mistakes. I love games where you control 2 characters at once, and Lot Lot is one of the more interesting early examples of that idea.
The gameplay consists of moving balls around cells in a 4x4 grid, trying to make them fall into various holes to accrue points. The hole at the bottom left of the field will attract a crab if there are any balls in it, and if the crab manages to take a ball, you lose a life.
Periodically, the walls of the grid will flash and then disappear, either allowing balls to fall to a lower level, or allowing them to mix with a cell on the left or right. The only way for the player to relocate the balls is to use the twin cursors, which is where the game starts to get interesting. You control the 2 cursors simultaneously, with one on an approximately 4 second delay. When the 2 cursors are over 2 different cells, you can press the A button to swap the contents of those cells.
Early on, this is fairly simple and straightforward: you are just moving balls from the top / left of the screen over to the right side so that they can fall into the 50 point hole. But once more balls start coming and the walls of the grid start turning off more frequently, the game quickly becomes a brain-twisting mess where you need to constantly think about not only where you are going, but where you have been, and what is currently changing. Just like misplacing a block in Tetris, the game quickly becomes about avoiding and fixing your mistakes. I love games where you control 2 characters at once, and Lot Lot is one of the more interesting early examples of that idea.
4/5, file this one with Bokosuka Wars under "early Famicom games I didn't expect to be this interesting"
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