If you were much of a puzzle game fan in the '90s, you probably came across Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo at some point. A combination Street Fighter parody/Tetris clone, it had players arranging falling gems into giant, similarly colored groupings and then smashing them for points. The bigger the groupings you smashed, the more gems would rain into your opponent's side of the screen, forcing them to deal with your runoff as they tried to keep their side from filling up.
It was easily one of the best puzzlers of its era, making it a no-brainer for inclusion in the Capcom Puzzle World anthology. Due sometime this summer for the PSP, Puzzle World collects three different variations on Puzzle Fighter, as well as brick-smashing game Block Block and the first three bubble-popping Buster Bros. games.
It's Puzzle Fighter that's the centerpiece of the collection, though (as well as the only part of it we've been able to get our hands on). Puzzle World not only features the original version of the game -which it calls "X" -but also "Y" and "Z" variations. All three feature big-headed characters from Street Fighter and other Capcom fighting games squaring off on the puzzle field. But while X has players making big gem-groups and then smashing them with a "bomb" piece, Y is much easier, as players only have to form lines of three or more same-colored gems to get rid of them. (Old-school gamers, think Columns.)
