TRIP'D Game Sample - 3DO
28An obscure game with some not-so-obscure origins, "TRIP'D" is a bizarre falling-object puzzle game like most drop puzzlers before it, developed by the strange team over at WARP (best known for "D", "D2" and "Enemy Zero") and presented by Kenji Eno. Kenji Eno was... an interesting young man, to put it mildly -- he was a rebel of the industry who was very unorthodox and could be perceived as ahead of his time and a bit of a perfectionist. Born in the 70s, he formed his own gaming company when he was 19, had very in-your-face advertisements (especially in his homeland), his works were as insightful as they were satirical at times, and besides designing games, he was an accomplished electronic musician (having done work on many of his own games) and worked in a variety of fields apart from video games and music including the automotive, cellphone, tobacco, and hotel industries.
He also collaborated on several games from other companies as he was very ambitious (some of these include "Altered Beast", "Panic Restaurant" and "Sega Rally 2") and even empathetic, creating one of the few games of the time with blind people in mind: "Real Sound: Kaze no Regret". He sadly passed away in 2013 due to heart failure from hypertension and was only 42. This game was mostly a throw-away title outside Japan but was actually one of his most popular games in Japan where it was known shorthand as "Flopon-kun". "Flopon: The Space Mutant" was a short series of puzzle games that saw release for 3DO and Playstation and the game was featured in a Japanese game show, had a "Flopon Rap", a bunch of associated merchandise and even a billboard of the titular creature, Flopon, plastered on banners throughout Japan. TRIP'D is actually a sequel to the first Flopon game (where it's known as "Flopon World" in Japan) with a lot of bizarre additional content stripped from it (some being mini-games based on other works WARP released in Japan), but even what's left isn't exactly normal. The game combines abstract audio visuals (sometimes cutesy, sometimes grotesque, and often random) and simple rules to create a decent single player experience and a slightly better multi-player experience.
The goal of the game is to connect four or more of the same objects to eliminate them from the field. If you form four objects in a square, you create a space creature -- creating another chain of the same type (not in a square) will eliminate that creature and give bonus points. The more creatures you can create of the same type, the greater the bonus before elimination. The single player mode is similar to the endless mode in Tetris, Columns, Puyo Puyo, or nearly any game before it (you play, earn points, level up, increase speed, etc.). Worth noting is that if any objects go past the top, the game will end (as opposed to being safe outside of the center) and every time you level up, you get some basic assistance as you will automatically eliminate a row. The versus mode follows the same main rules, though players can drop junk and raise the opponent's stack. The game is pretty easy, though it can take ages to defeat some of the higher-level opponents and there's no real payoff for doing so compared to some other puzzle games.
One thing that was curiously left in this version of Flopon World was the renamed "TRIP'DANCE", which is a basic little music generator (if you can even call it that) where you can make noises with different buttons to create a beat, with each button press cycling through some abstract and somewhat disturbing imagery. While Kenji was an interesting man, he didn't have the easiest personal life and some of these things can be hinted at through his various works (his studio was WARPed). The game has a few basic music tracks and they are all pretty neat and laid-back, and the graphics are serviceable for a puzzle game of the time. This is a video of the game in action. Enjoy.
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