Developed during the twilight years of the Famicom’s dominance in Asian markets, this title replicates the frantic, four-directional matching gameplay that defined its 16-bit counterparts on the Super NES and Genesis.
The gameplay remains remarkably faithful to the source material, placing the player in the center of a grid to deflect and clear encroaching colored shapes before they reach the central square. Technically, the NES hardware struggles slightly with the sheer volume of sprites during high-level play, leading to noticeable flicker and occasional slowdown when the screen becomes cluttered. However, the developers managed to retain the core addictive loop, providing a steep difficulty curve that requires high-speed color recognition and rhythmic inputs. The aesthetic is understandably stripped back, losing the psychedelic, smooth-scrolling backgrounds of the official versions, but the functional visuals ensure that the logic-based puzzle mechanics remain the primary focus.
As an unlicensed product, the game lacks the professional polish found in official Nintendo titles, particularly regarding the audio department and menu presentation. Despite its gray-market origins, the cartridge has gained a reputation among NES enthusiasts for its stability and its status as a "lost" version of a major puzzle franchise. It stands as a testament to the ingenuity of developers who worked around licensing restrictions to bring contemporary hits to aging hardware, filling a gap for a game that never officially graced the Famicom in Japan.
