You often forget how much a sickness can drag you down until you catch it again. I've had such little energy and been nappin more frequently that it's pretty annoying! At least there's low commitment games to check out in the meantime.

Unfortunately it is with this licensed game that I began to realize something tragic: I am a terrible Puzzle Bobble player. It's the same ordeal that befalls my skill in Puyo Puyo, centering more on combo maneuvers and big plays than careful positioning and lineups, except not as strong since I figured out just randomly firing the pieces is an actual strategy this time around. Don't misunderstand me though, it's a fun time, and funnily enough a decent training wheel for when I play more of this line of tile-match franchise. It also goes without saying that it'd be fine to try this even if you've never seen the anime or read the manga it's based on (I finished Episode 7 at the time of writing this and have friends that discuss and share this as well).

Puzzle Bobble's already a series noted on its charm, making it a great fit for AzuDaioh, a comedy series based on exaggerated reactions and goofy scenarios. Each break creates a cut-in of various expressions the character of your choice does, which can sometimes be distracting if the tiles you need to line up happen to be behind it, but overall are pretty fun to watch. Alongside this, you'll also see different sorts of interactions and galleries available within the game, which is always a plus when it comes to this ragtag group of students. The 2D lineart can be pretty strong - though since I emulated it thanks to Flycast I'm actually unsure if its my dumbass messing around with enhancements or it looking like it as-is - but I'd rather have this than what happened with Sakura Wars Columns 2 where it looks like some weird mesh of filtered scalers and chibi-like proportions. I stuck with Yomi (GOAT) for both the single-player mode and VSCPU, only swapping out to Chiyo-chan since she's the second-funniest character. On that note, the order in the CPU mode is interesting cause it's positioned just how I imagined it: Tomo's moronic and pitifully easy, Sakaki's pretty chill and normal, Osaka is secretly a prodigy behind her dopey and absent-minded demeanor, Kagura's a tryhard, Chiyo-chan is surprisingly and worryingly a tough opponent despite being like 10 years old, Yomi's scary as hell, and Yukari-sensei is actually one of the biggest forces of chaos that has ever set foot in the school. Sad that Nyamo only shows up as an animated partner, but at least we got the other cats and dogs from the show, and thankfully no Kimura to ruin it as usual.

But yea, nothin else to say other than it's fun, and fits the series' esoteric comedy and charm like a glove. Since it's a Sega NAOMI title, you'll have to use the aforementioned Flycast to emulate it, and I believe Redream can also do this as well. NAOMI ROMs aren't as common but you definitely shouldn't go over to Emulation GameTechWiki and search its page on the system in question to figure out where to find them. Would totally recommend not doing that. What you CAN do though, is look at one of the greatest ending themes to have ever graced the television medium.

Maradona/Ikearagao in normal puzzle bobble: the worst player you've ever met.

Maradona/Ikearagao in Azumanga Daioh Puzzle Bobble: Unbeatable god emperor.

Explain that atheists.

For an arcade puzzle game based off an anime, they put WAY too much effort into this. I'm not complaining though, this game is fire.

Again, for an arcade release, this has a really impressive amount of content. Every character has their own routes in both of the single player modes, and you're able to unlock tons of pieces of art of all the characters that any Azumanga fan will get a kick out of. Not to mention the gameplay itself is just solid, it's just Puzzle Bobble/Bust A Move pretty much but it's still really fun. This was actually my first time ever playing one of these games, and it being introduced through one of my favorite pieces of media ever made me have a lot more fun with it. I do think the gameplay can occasionally be a bit luck reliant, which for a puzzle game isn't really my thing, but eh it's not the end of the world.

As an Azumanga fan, I loved this. Getting to play as Osaka in a video game is a very powerful feeling and unlocking all the cool recreations of scenes in the series was so awesome. As a video game fan, I still really liked this. The gameplay is really fun, and the amount of content is insanely admirable.