174. Spot (Virgin, Famicom, 1992)

Spot is a 4-player strategy board game starring the Spot character who was the 7-up soda mascot at the time. The game takes place on a 7x7 grid and the objective is to control as many squares as possible. You start off with one piece in the corner (or 2 pieces in diagonal corners if playing in 2-player mode) and you can either move one square and duplicate your piece or move 2 squares without duplicating your piece. If any square adjacent to the square that you move to has an opponent's piece in it, that piece will change color to match yours, gaining you more squares.

All in all it's a fairly simple puzzle/strategy game that is best played with other people. Especially because the AI is pretty brutal and clearly knows the winning strategy. I eventually decided to play against 3 other AIs instead of just one, and at least that time I got 2nd place. There is clearly a winning algorithm here that would probably take a few dozen more matches to fully wrap my brain around.

While it's not normally wrth mentioning, the menu actually has a bit of character: you can change TV channels to see Spot in various TV shows or select a little Famicom to go back to the game. Spot also has some pretty nice graphical effects for a Famicom title. Two animated Spot characters hang out on the side of the board, seemingly discussing the players' moves. After a win, you are greeted to a stadium with fireworks going off, and the firework animation is pretty nice.

3/5, a basic strategy game with nice presenation