Speed Puzzle Power is my place to highlight the wonders of speed and reflex oriented puzzlers. We’re starting right with my personal favourite.
-Segazoom
Taito was a powerhouse in the 1990s. Best-in-class shooters in Darius, unique experimental fighting games in Fighters Impact and Psychic Force, pursuing perfection in single-screen platformers with the Bubblun dragons and expanding on that clear-the-screen essence in Elevator Action Returns. Another place they were leading the pack in, though, was puzzle games. Some of their other entries I’ll keep secret for later. For now, let’s dive into the ancient Egyptian stone-tablet-and-rare-gem simulator Cleopatra Fortune.
The concept is simple: surround gems and sarcophaguses (sarcophagi? I’m not getting into this debate) entirely with stones and the valuable items will disappear. Lines of gems or stones also disappear in the Tetris fashion. In later stages, mummies will appear as block types holding up some stones, but they must be encased with a valuable item or they will not disappear when enclosed, creating a unique nuisance for your forward planning.
This is an arcade-focused title, so you vs the board and score counter is the main draw here. Working efficiently and in a structured manner is the key to success. Clearing the screen gives a point bonus that increases every time you achieve a clear. In the early stages of a run, this should be the main goal, as the combination of items that fall develop in complexity, some of which will almost never be considered in your stratagems, so clears will soon become a distant memory. That all said and done, if you’re a veteran and feeling extra spicy, feel free to jump straight into your friend and mine; huge combos.
The combo system works much like Puyo Puyo, where you cause a line clear or encasing of gems, and have what’s above that make a new chain Ad (hopefully) Infinitum. The points increase sharply past combos of 4 actions, so with quick fingers and a chess brain, you can set off huge combos. In fact, the arcade board has a first boot pattern that has been studied to create a devastating counterstop combo. Additional rungs of the combo ladder start to climb in reward almost exponentially, so dream big to win big.
As with all puzzle games of this type, the key is how quickly it can push you into the flow state we all crave, and how well it can hold you there, oblivious to anything other than the 7 by 13 grid before your eyes. At least for myself, the answer is almost instantly. The tame starting patterns allow you to feel like you are controlling order, quickly attuning your brain to planning screen clears and measured play. As it ramps up, your brain is already in the space and focuses ever sharper to keep up until it all becomes too much. The thing with that is, well, it can get out of control VERY fast. It’s much harder to read the board state if you get into panic mode than purely colour-matching or line-making examples of this genre, and without knowing exactly what you’re aiming to close off, you’ll scramble to hit a target you just sailed past, the next piece swiftly following into its wake, and with an air of inevitability, you rocket off the top of the stage and have to put another 100 yen in the coin slot Every now and then though, you’ll read it properly, recover and feel like a pharaoh yourself – until the next wave, that is.
One of Taito’s biggest strengths up to this present day is their in-house sound team, ZUNTATA. Cleopatra Fortune’s main track Shinin’ Queen is a hall of fame contender. A driving, almost disco beat with a subtle ancient Egyptian influence that will grant you the Eye Of Horus, urging forward your quest for points only dreamed of. It’s the cornerstone of the pyramid if you will (I don’t care if you won’t, I choose the metaphors around here).
There’s also a puzzle mode, at least in the home versions of the game. This is perfectly serviceable and does let you save progress (at least on Saturn, I believe on PSX too – I don’t have it to hand as it is ludicrously expensive), but the teasers often boil down to trial and error – though some solutions are rather elegant indeed.
It’s a shame no competitive two-player mode really exists here, but I think I can understand why, also. The fact that height escalates very quickly means that your standard competitive puzzle game trope of throwing garbage tiles/blocks/stuff onto your opponent’s board may always be too much of a threat. Instead, while swiftness of thought becomes vital in later stages of play, Cleopatra Fortune rewards the zen gamer. If inner tranquillity is what you seek, it may be found in this tomb’s walls. But beware the curse, and all other Egyptian cliches I have yet to affix to this article. Just play it, it’s bloody good.