Jammes [ジャムズ] Game Sample - SNES/SFC

Just when I thought I knew or heard about basically every Super Famicom game ever, I came across this game a few months ago while perusing eBay. What is it? A falling object puzzle game. Awesome right? No, not awesome. I bought the game for a few bucks because I didn't think it would be easy to find complete any time soon, but I can see why nobody really knows or talks about it; the game kinda sucks.

Made by a little-known outfit called Carrozzeria Japan, the game is a needlessly convoluted puzzle game brimming with mediocrity and it feels more like you're taking a math test than playing a really fun puzzler. At a glance, one would wonder what the hell you even do in the game, but I'll explain the basic idea. First however, I'll discuss the overall presentation.

For starters, you wouldn't believe that this is an SFC game made in 1995; its simplistic presentation and ho-hum soundtrack don't even seem like they'd fit in amongst the launch titles of the system. Don't get me wrong; simplicity can sometimes look and be amazing (if you want an example, check out SFC's "Wagyan Paradise", a Namco title in a series long tailored to a young demographic, primarily young children), but this game has uninspired written all over it. There's less than a dozen tunes and a lot of them aren't even "music", more like short, underwhelming ditties.

The gameplay is relatively original, but it's far too involved for a game like this, especially when the pace of the computer becomes pretty untolerable right after the second opponent and the game has sticky controls (you can hold left and right on the controller and your blocks won't move as quickly or effortlessly as you'd like at times, as if there's some strange directional lag). There are three basic principles you should be aware of: Color, Number, and Position. While that sounds relatively simple, it's not.

The main way to remove tiles in this game isn't by matching three/four of a kind or clearing lines; you must "sandwich" tiles vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. For example, say you want to eliminate some blue tiles and you want to remove those tiles with orange tiles. You would set an orange tile, then place all the blue tiles you want in a line (Vert/Hori/Diag) and then end the sequence with an orange block. If ANY color other than blue gets in the path of the chain, it's broken; you can't set an orange on the end at that point because another color will be considered the end point.

The numbers are very important because in order to completely remove a tile from play, your goal is the get the number on the tiles (or die) to zero. Every time a group is sandwiched, you deplete a point from the tiles. Because you will likely be unable to keep up with the mathematical prowess of the CPU, you have to rely on special tiles and abilities. One of the most useful abilities is getting a round "+1" object. Sandwich it with the proper color and you can raise the opponent's stack a level.

The only problem is the computer will manipulate these special abilites like crazy, and they love to gain access to the ability that makes all your tiles unknown so you don't know what you're dropping (in the Basic Mode, you can sort of guess as matching pairs will wiggle, but normal mode doesn't have that luxury). I was bored after the fourth opponent and haven't played it again until now. There's also some kind of little story in the game, but I don't even care at this point. All I know is there's two main characters, Daisuke-kun (boy) and Saiko-san (girl, and older sister of Daisuke) and something about Jammes. This is a basic video which goes through the first three opponents and tutorial.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Jammes
• ジャムズ
• SNES
• SFC
• Puzzle
• Dice

[Sledge070685]

Why don't you do a game sample for uh........ Rhythm Tengoku?