Arcade Archives: Senkyu

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This week's Arcade Archives release is... Senkyu (Seibu Kaihatsu, 1995)

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Although an English ROM does exist (Battle Balls, under US license from Fabtek and other companies in other territories), only the Japanese ROM is included here. No Preference Settings this time.

Yes, yes, yes! Balls, balls, balls! In the mid-'90s, there was no longer any time for Klax, but there was a lot of time for competitive puzzle games. As explained by Masamitsu “Moo” Niitani in this puzzle game creator interview translated by shmuplations, Puyo Puyo "established a “post-Tetris” standard for falling-block puzzle games" and so in its wake, especially after Puyo Puyo Tsuu, everyone wanted to give the genre a try. This leads us to Seibu Kaihatsu's attempt, Senkyu / Battle Balls, which has elements of Cave's Uo Poko (balls adhere to gravity inside the pit) and Konami's Puzzle Taisen-dama (nuisance balls, when next to a matched set of balls, turn into a usable coloured ball) but does a few things of its own. In particular, the nuisance balls you send over to your opponent can also be blank ones that don't rest in your pit but instead absorb one of your coloured balls when they touch them, so you'll have to match something next to them to free them again. This also has a single-player Skill Tester mode that lets you play on your own, with nuisance balls sometimes being part of what you drop into the pit (a solo mode wasn't always guaranteed in games like this) so it's not just versus battles. The presentation's really cute too, although it could've done with a few more music tracks, the main one does grate a little for me! I think Uo Poko is a bit more interesting because of its unique control method, but this is one of those competitive puzzle games from the era I don't see talked about very much, so it's nice to see it get a more accessible home version. 

By the way, Raiden DX fans might recognise this one- the Playstation port of that game included a demo of Senkyu as a bonus! It got its own stand-alone port to the system later on, but it's always neat to see demos in PS1 games as extras~