What it was
A 1994 puzzler from Nintendo R&D1 and Intelligent Systems, with Toad as the hero for once. Wario has taken over the Peaceful Woods, so Toad goes after him. You clear each round by lining up three or more of the same colour, and at least one of the three has to be a bomb. Three monsters on their own won't do it.
Here's the twist. You don't steer the falling pieces. You are Toad, standing on top of the pile, picking up monsters and stacks and putting them somewhere else. You can kick things across the field and scurry up the side of a stack to reach what you need. Let the field fill to the brim and Toad is trapped. Game over.
Where it sits in history
It came out in Japan on 19 February 1994, in North America on 10 December 1994 and in Europe on 15 February 1995. That puts it at the very end of the NES. It's the last officially licensed NES game and the last first-party game for the system in North America, and the only NES game to carry an ESRB rating, a board that had started up almost three months before.
Reviews were mixed. GamePro called the SNES version 'a ho-hum puzzler' and a Tetris clone with hard controls. Nintendo Power liked the two-player mode but said it wasn't as easy to control as Tetris 2. Years later, Allgame gave the NES version 4 stars out of 5 and said the gameplay had a 'surprising level of depth'. Same game, very different reads.
How it plays today
Give it ten minutes before you decide. The first rounds feel fiddly because you're thinking about where Toad stands as well as what matches. Then it clicks, and you start planning two moves ahead: that stack goes there, I climb this, the bomb lands on the red.
The two-player mode is the best part. Make two or more matches in a row and a stack of enemies lands on your mate's side. The music gets repetitive, so turn the telly down a bit and the banter up.
Compared with
- Dr. Mario: The cleaner puzzler this one gets measured against, and usually loses to.
- Tetris 2: Easier to steer, which is the standing complaint about Toad.
- Yoshi's Cookie: Another Nintendo puzzler from the same stretch.
Why it matters
Csikszentmihalyi's flow is absorption when the challenge matches your skill and the feedback is immediate. Wario's Woods earns it slowly. The first minutes are clumsy, then Toad's movements become second nature and the pile reads like a map.
There's something nice in that. A game where you're inside the problem, standing on it, rather than dropping things from above. Lots of real tangles are like that. You can't see them clearly until you climb up and stand in them.
Read: The zone: why good games make time disappear →
- Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.
What you're levelling up
You have been training these without noticing. Here is how to do it on purpose, and where it pays off away from the couch. All the skills games teach →
Planning ahead
In the game. Matches need a bomb, and Toad can only lift what he can reach, so every move sets up the next one.
Do it on purpose. Before each lift, say out loud the next two moves.
Off the couch. Packing the ute, planning a week of shifts, mapping a night out so everyone gets home. Think two moves ahead and nobody's stuck waiting for a lift at 2am.
Spatial thinking
In the game. Matches run horizontal, vertical or diagonal, and some monsters only fall to a diagonal match.
Do it on purpose. Spend one run hunting only diagonal matches.
Off the couch. Reading a floor plan, parallel parking, loading a dishwasher properly. A flatmate who can do that last one is a keeper.
Keeping your cool
In the game. A Thwomp comes down disguised as the ceiling, and the field fills until Toad is trapped.
Do it on purpose. When it fills, slow down and fix one column at a time instead of grabbing.
Off the couch. When deadlines pile up, same trick: pick one thing, finish it, then the next. Grabbing at everything is how Toad gets buried.
Verdict · 7/10
A brave, slightly clumsy puzzler that asks more of you than Tetris does. Worth it for the versus mode and the history.
