59. Puchi Carat (Taito, Arcade (PS2), 1997)

The problem: I'm about 5 days behind on my games.

The solution: Taito Memories.

Taito Memories is a series of arcade compilations of Taito games released on the Playstation 2, and arcade games are easy to play and write up because of how short and straightforward they tend to be. The series of 4 Taito Memories compilations hosts a whopping 100 games total, 25 on each disc. They were also released in North America as the 2-title Taito Legends moniker, though only 68 of the games made it over. 

Puchi Carat is one such game; a versus puzzle game that is basically Puzzle Bobble with Breakout controls. You bounce a ball around using a paddle destroying blocks at the top of the screen while preventing the ball from dropping below your paddle. Here, though, the blocks are affected by a certain kind of gravity: if you break a chain so that no part of it it touching the top of the screen, it will fall off, and turn into extra blocks to crowd your opponent's screen.

I found that the best strategy was to hit the ball so that it was traveling at a very shallow angle. The control is not as precise and something like The Block Kuzushi games, so I did make a few mistakes. If a ball happens to pass by your paddle, it just bounces back in to the playing field, but then 3 lines of blocks are added to the screen. Typically, if I made one mistake, it would rapidly cascade to a loss in a matter of seconds, so while I like the concept, it wasn't all that fun to play.

Puchi Carat holds the distinction of being the most recently released of all 100 Taito Memories games, even though it was released 23 years ago. The graphics have a real nice anime style, with huge, fluid sprites behind the play area like Puzzle Fighter.

3/5, interesting & difficult spin on Breakout