Game:

Blockout (1989)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 16:16

1,473 views

20

So...Geom Cube!!! WHOOOOO YEAAAAAHHH!!! GEOM CUUUUUUBE! Well, SOMEONE has to sound excited about it, because if you watch this video, you may be scratching your head...but in all seriousness, I have a bit of interesting information that you may want to remember. Geom Cube is a pretty decent, but basic, puzzle game, released very early in the Playstation's life, back in 1995.

The publisher and developer of the title is Technōs...now, the American division of Technōs may not ring a bell to a huge number of folks. Some titles you may have seen from ATI (American Technōs Inc.)? The Combatribes, Super Dodge Ball, and (perhaps, most importantly) River City Ransom. There are a few others, but I will stop with those...though you should know that more people know of Technōs as "Technōs Japan" --- with that name, you may have heard of the popular "Double Dragon" and that River City Ransom game I mentioned before? It is perhaps better known as a game that is part of the popular "Kunio-kun" brand of games.

At any rate, the "original" Technōs filed for bankruptcy in 1996, so as you can see, Geom Cube was one of the last games Technōs published and/or developed...I don't blame them, because Geom Cube is fundamentally the same as an interesting game made in the late 80s, known as "Blockout"...to save on text space, you can read a bit on that game at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockout

The one important thing to note from the above link regarding Blockout though is this:

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The New York Times reviewed the game in an article about educational software for mathematics, writing that Blockout "doesn't pretend to be educational, but the skills required to master it are not unrelated to mathematics, particularly geometry." A 1993 study found evidence that playing Blockout improved the spatial visualization ability of 10 to 14-year-olds. Dragon gave the game's Atari Lynx version a perfect score. (Also, to add, the game had a sort of "remake", around 2007)

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Geom Cube is 3D Tetris...and once you understand how to move around the grid and rotate your pieces, the game is not particularly complicated to understand and you oddly feel "smarter" the more you play, as you plan around 3D spaces. Really though, besides a smooth 60FPS and a decent soundtrack (and, arguably, "sexy" characters like a female-shaped android and a samurai), the game is Blockout. Limited modes...and your only means of attacking an opponent is to add a "layer" to whatever their current stack is. It's functional, but it may make you want more, if you loved games like Tetris Attack.

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