#570 Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo Hidden Characters (1/3): Akuma playthrough.
0A playthrough of the boss and hidden character Akuma in Capcom's Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo.
Puzzle Fighter was Capcom's tongue-in-cheek way of putting a puzzle game onto the arcade scene, supposedly to attempt to compete with Sega's Puyo Puyo series. Now, Puyo Puyo this is not, but it is still quite a good game all things considered, if a little more basic.
I played Puyo Puyo pretty extensive a couple of years back, and my experience mostly consisted of getting my ass handed to me repeatedly by that ludicrous AI. Puzzle Fighter on the other hand is a much more casual affair, not so much about ludicrously well set up combos as just making big column of gems and then using a orb piece to destroy them. As with Puyo Puyo, this will cause penalty blocks to drop onto the opponent's side, and will either cause them to top out, or will automatically top them out if enough blocks are dropped as once. A neat thing with these attacks is that every attack that happens sees your character of choice using one of their trademark special moves on the enemy, or even a super move if your combo is powerful enough to top them out. Of course, it's worth noting that Super Puzzle Fighter was eventually adapted into a proper fighting game, Gem Fighter, which you can find videos for in the #200-#300 paylist of mine, covering both Dan and Akuma, who are hidden characters here as well.
Akuma serves as the boss of the game, and can only be played as with a code. The character chosen doesn't actually differentiate the game much (something we'll see again when I get to the Magical Drop series), but they're hidden so I might as well cover them anyway. The only thing that really changes is the pattern of the blocks dropped by a combo attack, which I found didn't have a dramatic effect on whether you would recover from said combo attack or not, with the exception of Dan. Akuma works as a decent boss in this game, even if there isn't too much to him, and the fact that he was made unlockable too was a nice touch, in a game which is basically all fan-service anyhow.
Say goodbye for Akuma for a while. We won't be seeing him again until I get around to Tekken 7.