Sometimes I forget just how good Game Boy Color games can look and sound, playing this really makes me hope Nintendo adds GBC games to Nintendo Switch Online someday. Another great entry in this series, and like I said, some really great pixel art and arrangements of different Pokemon songs. Game plays as well as it should, and has a lot of neat unlockables to help with re-playability.

Something I'm kind of conflicted on is the way Challenge mode works. It's your standard Panel de Pon single player mode where you go up against one A.I opponent after the other, but in this game the A.I doesn't have their own puzzle board. Instead, they have a health bar, and getting chains or combos will take off health. Instead of seeing them get combos, the opponent will just randomly be like "hey I just got a 5 chain, no you can't see it, die" and you have to deal with any garbage being sent. It's an interesting twist on the usual formula, and it honestly is a neat way to bypass the limitations of the GBC, but I can't help but feel a little cheated when the opponent just gives me some insane garbage out of nowhere. But like I said, it's an interesting version of this mode.

Overall I would have loved to have owned this back in the day, it's the perfect portable version of this game for the time, and kind of makes the N64 Pokemon Puzzle League look like joke with how clean and lovely the presentation is here.

Gameplay: AMAZING
Music: Eh
Replayable? Kinda
Streamed? No

Extra Notes? It was more puzzle league, which is great, but a weird title all together.

This is Tetris Attack with a Pokemon skin on it. The soundtrack has some really fun, boppin' renditions of songs from the Gold & Silver era. It's my favorite part of the game, and that's not to be dismissive of the rest of it. There are a few different game modes, none of which are very challenging or novel, but at least you get some variety.

Pokemon Puzzle Challenge is a fun on-the-go puzzle fix. On my emulation handheld, I think I prefer this over the SNES's Tetris Attack because the controls don't use the shoulder buttons.

Intelligent Systems, you beautiful bastards. The spritework here is absolutely insane, just so gorgeous here, some amazing portraits of the Johto gym leaders, along with a very cute sprite of the Gold & Silver protagonist. This is a great, great spin-off; not just one of those old spin-offs that take an IP’s name and slaps it on a puzzle game, this feels like an actual Pokémon game. A great companion to Gold & Silver versions, too, the way it highlights its starters and baby evolutions. It was just a real treat, and considering the console version of this is more of a Pokémon anime game instead of a Pokémon game, this is definitely the one to play. Between this and the Zelda ‘Oracle’ games, it’s really spectacular what some folks were able to do with the spritework on such limiting hardware. Like, this might be one of the best looking Pokémon games ever.

An aggressively fine version of the Tetris Attack formula. Spritework is very cute, it has some neat little remixes of Gold/Silver themes, and it even manages to incorporate catching into its story mode to some limited extent! Unfortunately, smaller board size leads to a lot less flexibility and combo potential, the back-and-forth nature of match play is impossible on a single screen and the compromise they come up with to turn your enemy into an RPG health bar, while cute, does make the 'versus' aspect that Panel de Pon thrives off of a bit moot. The base game here is good - of course it is it's Panel de Pon - but it IS the novelty version of its console-based older brother. Jynx's defeat sprite is hilarious, though,