Puyo Pop Fever
ぷよぷよフィーバー, Puyopuyo Fībā, Puyo Puyo Fever
Today, we have Puyo Pop Fever, also known as Puyo Puyo Fever in its native Japan, a puzzle video game developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega. It is the fifth main installment in the Puyo Puyo puzzle game series and the second Puyo Puyo game to be programmed by Sonic Team after Puyo Pop (which was released just after the series’ original owner and developer, Compile, went bankrupt). This was the start of the “reboot” series of the Puyo Pop franchise, with a new plot discussing how Accord lost the flying cane. Sega, which acquired the series’ rights from Compile in 1998, published all the Japanese releases of the game. The game was scarcely released internationally, and certain versions were released by other publishers in those areas. Only the GameCube and Nintendo DS versions were released in North America.
It was originally released in 2003 for the Japanese arcades and early to mid-2004 for subsequent releases (Dreamcast version for Japanese players, PlayStation 2, Xbox, Game Boy Advance, and PlayStation Portable versions for European players). The game’s artist is Yuji Uekawa, known for redesigning Sonic and his friends, including adding new characters such as Shadow the Hedgehog from the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. Takashi Yuda is the game’s director (known for Knuckles the Echidna’s original creator/designer), and Yuji Naka (now arrested for insider trading twice) is the game’s producer. Hideki Abe is the game’s composer. Since this game has a lot of ports, we’re sticking with the GameCube version.
Ms. Accord (Miwa Kouzuki1/Irene Trapp, replaced by Wendee Lee since Tetris), a teacher at the Primp Magic School, has lost her Flying Cane, the equivalent of a magic wand, and claims to have a reward for the student who can find it. The player plays the role of either Amitie (Shiho Kikuchi/Evelyn Huynh, later replaced by Madoka Magica star Christine Marie Cabanos since Tetris) or Raffine2 (Noriko Namiki/Brett Walter, later replaced by Erica Lindbeck since Tetris), students at the school, as they venture across the Puyo Pop Fever world to find the cane, while meeting many wacky characters along the way and battling them. Raffine’s course contains more difficult gameplay and alters the characters the player meets, as well as which character actually finds the wand. When playing as Raffine near to the end of the game, it is revealed that Accord never actually lost her flying cane. Raffine then plans on revealing her and Popoi’s secret, but fails in her ending, as she is knocked unconscious by Ms. Accord, losing all memories of the flying cane incident. She regains consciousness near her school where Amitie and her friends congratulate her.
The game’s English voice acting is somewhat of a train wreck, compared to the well-known voice actors/actresses from various video games and anime in Puyo Puyo Tetris. Rider was renamed “Lidelle” in Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 (Namiki Noriko/Giovannie Pico, Lauren Landa since Tetris 2). Arle’s name was pronounced “Arlee” (Sonozaki Mie/Ali Johnston, later replaced by Erica Mendez since Tetris), which was also a train wreck — as her name is obviously pronounced “Arl”.
This is the first time that Rulue (the blue-haired, green-eyed, white-and-blue-dress-and-sandals-clad martial artist) and Satan3 (the green-haired, red — or blue in Tetris — clothes-clad demon) don’t appear in Fever and its sequel. The game got a 73% out of 100, according to the now-closed GameRankings, and a 72 out of 100 according to Metacritic. The game’s official website (in Japanese) is still functioning.
The article was originally posted on Medium on October 17, 2020.
Link goes to the Japanese Wikipedia (will function for the Japanese seiyuu articles that do not possess an English Wikipedia article)
Raffine was renamed “Raffina” since Tetris.
Known as Dark Prince as described in Tetris.