Previous Next

Arguably the most popular non-color Game Boy game ever was the very first game, the one that came with the machine itself, Tetris. Its popularity could be attributed to two things: the simplicity of the gameplay which meant practically anyone could pick it up and play, and the downright addictiveness of the game!

Shanghai Pocket is a game which Sunsoft hopes will have the same effect on Game Boy Color owners. It's another puzzle game, but of a different style than Tetris.

Whereas with Tetris you started with a blank screen and the pieces slowly dropped down to fill it up, in Shanghai Pocket you begin the game with all the pieces - or tiles - on-screen from the outset, and the idea is to get rid of them before the timer runs out.

To do this, you must match tiles together. When you match two of the same, they vanish. Sounds easy? Well, it's not. Because it's not quite as simple as all that. To make things a little more difficult, you can't select a tile that's between two other tiles or partially obscured by another tile. And more often than not, it seems that the tile you really need is buried under a huge pile of others.

Shanghai Pocket offers three different game modes: Shanghai, Hong Kong and Gold Rush. In the main game mode Shanghai, you can play on one of twelve different boards, each of which is represented by an animal. In Hong Kong you play against the CPU or a friend via the link-up feature in a race to see who can clear the tiles first. In the Gold Rush mode, both players (again, CPU or link-up) must try to be the first to find the elusive golden tiles.

Shanghai Pocket is very addictive, although the difficulty level might put some people off. It has to be said though that it doesn't quite match up to Tetris for addictiveness, and the limited number of boards may mean it won't have quite the same longevity. Definitely worth a look though.