| Best Puzzle
Game
Tetris
C'mon, people,
what'd you expect? Tetris is considered by some to be the greatest game
of all-time with the most universal appeal. Young and old, boys and girls,
everyone plays Tetris -- of course it's gonna be the top puzzle game for
the NES. Arrange descending blocks into solid horizontal lines to make
them disappear: that's it. Yet the game developed behind the iron curtain
has a belying simplicity that masks the complexity and addictiveness of
the title. Tetris reached the zenith of its popularity during the tenure
of the NES and it sparked a controversy that many remember to this day.
Under the guise of Tengen, Atari released Tetris for the NES. The version
was almost a perfect arcade port. It featured single player, two player
and two player cooperative play. There was only one problem--Tengen didn't
really own the rights to the game for console ports. Nintendo did, and
Tengen's version conflicted with their own version of Tetris. A court battle
ensued and Tengen's Tetris was legally pulled from the market. The irony
of it all? The Tengen version (shown above) was far better (the official
Nintendo version only featured a one-player game!).
Runners up:
Dr.
Mario
 Take
a proven franchise character, dress him up as a doctor and have him fling
pills into a bottle and what do you get? No, not a bunch of juvenile junkies--you
get Mario, M.D. Little evil virii (who thankfully are color-coded) have
invaded Mario's laboratory bottles. To destroy them you have to align the
virii with similarly colored pills. It sounds simple, but the later levels
require you to create chains and falling combos to clear the stage. The
game makes the list for all the right reasons: simple, addictive and ultimately
complex gameplay. Throwing Mario into the mix sure didn't hurt the game's
popularity any, but you do have to wonder why Mario had such an extensive
stash of pills. Guess he gave up on eating mushrooms.
Tetris
2
 You
take the first, you take the second, you take it all and throw in bombs
and you have: Tetris 2. Borrowing gameplay from both Tetris and Dr. Mario,
Tetris 2 has the same sort of descending blocks seen in Tetris. Only this
time, they're color-coded like the pills in Dr. Mario. The final ingredient
in this mix is bombs. To clear the level, clear the bombs. To clear the
bombs, line up the same colored blocks. It's another great Nintendo puzzle
game, but it's clearly not on the same level as Dr. Mario and Tetris.
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