Guess what, I played a Picross game. Running this through my New 3DS kept me company during travel in Japan and on some quiet nights at home. Mechanically it’s identical to the Game Boy instalments but having colour and larger puzzles (that aren’t broken up as in 2) makes a difference.
Following Mario’s Picross on Game Boy, it has a similar structure of menus but a full half of the game is contained in the additional Wario mode, a flavourful way to frame the “Free Mode” that doesn’t recognise your mistakes as you go. The GB sequel Picross 2 would expand on this even further with a sort of explorable map screen where you control Mario to navigate between puzzles but here it’s pretty simple, although the menu transitions are fun with a “ワ” character flying over to cover the “マ” in Mario’s name. Did I mention this game is mostly in Japanese save for some menus? Pretty lazy to release it like that, but eh.
This factor is a little bit of a barrier but my basic skills were enough to see me through to understanding all the solution names. The solutions themselves are quite good, simple enough shapes to sometimes be recognisable as you play, but often complex enough to provide a challenge (I even had to use hints and “? mode” towards the end). Only about half are animated when solved for some reason. Still, any animation and colour are welcome after the original.
I did miss modern conveniences such as stylus control and auto-blanking grid numbers, but I’m getting used to the older system, even seeing it as part of the challenge. With 300 puzzles in all I was kept busy and satisfied for a long time with this game. Including an amusing denouement where extra unexpected bonus puzzle sets kept being unlocked, to my increasing bemusement.
Additional: this game has a few isolated puzzles of enemies from Super Mario World and Wario Land. It’s nothing like the fun character puzzle sections from the 8 Picross NP games which represented different Nintendo series, though. Too bad they never released those on the Virtual Console.
(Credit to Vizzed Gameplay Videos for the screenshot)
