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Yeah Obscure Japanese Nintendo DS Import Titles!
One of the most popular/obscure games for the original GameBoy was strange little puzzle game (and the black sheep of the Mario family) called Mario's Picross. The game was sort of a combination of sudoku and minesweeper where you start out with a blank grid and by cross-referencing numbers you slowly fill in the grid. When complete the grid would revel a hidden Mario-related picture ... ah it's sort of hard to explain so just give it a try and you'll see what I mean.
Mario's Picross came out way way back in 1995 I know of very few people who actually played this game (about the same number who played the CD-i versions of The Legend of Zelda), but everyone who did truly loved this game. The difficulty scaled well, the puzzles were fun, and it was the perfect portable game. Plus you were making pictures of Mario characters, what couldn't be more fun?
I was hoping that a DS version of Picross would come out as the touchscreen and worldwide success of sudoku puzzles it would only make sense for a Picross game to appear on the DS. And my prayers have been answered ... sort of.
Picross DS has been released! But only in Japan (of course, why can't we get decent puzzle games in the States?). Thankfully the DS doesn't have region protection and Play-Asia is awesome when it comes to imports, so I'm quite excited about getting this one. The reviews have been quite good and there is hardly any reading necessary, so this is about as good as it gets when it comes to an import title.
If you enjoy sudoku puzzles you might want to give this one a look and make sure to try one of the many online versions of these picross/nanograms a try. Yeah import titles!
Speaking of which, have you learnt to pronounce 'Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan' yet? The sequel's on the way ;)
Posted by Olly at March 22, 2007 03:28 PMWould an English version of this come out anytime in the EU?
Posted by niall at March 22, 2007 04:03 PMHey thats and all but when is your next show coming out? sorry to rude about it but I just want to know thanks
Posted by sebastian stephenson at March 22, 2007 04:54 PMI thought I heard rumors of Picross coming to the Wii, maybe I heard wrong but I need my Picross fix!
Posted by ilikesata at March 23, 2007 04:18 AMHey, I'm trying to play Picross on that website (never played it before), but I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. It doesn't provide instructions...
Posted by mythicalmonk at March 23, 2007 01:54 PMI loved the original Gameboy game. They print these puzzles in Games Magazine and World of Puzzles under the name Paint-by-Numbers. Does it have tri-color puzzles this time around?
Posted by Robb at March 26, 2007 09:53 AM@Mythical monk
The key to Picross is to count out all of the squares as if they were only divided by one white square. So in a 10x10 puzzle, 44 has to be either (X's are black, .'s are white) XXXX..XXXX, XXXX.XXXX., or .XXXX.XXXX! So, take the from-the-left position (XXXX.XXXX.) and compare it to from-the-right position. Note that both bars of 4 black blocks in the two extremes have 3 blocks that will be black no matter what. So you black-in these 6 squares: .XXX..XXX. Now that you have some definitely black squares, it will limit the placement of the black columns that intersect it.
When you know a square is white, you put a little dot in it. When you completely fill out a bar of 4 (in the example) you know that it has spaces (or the edge of the puzzle) on either side, so you can mark them with a dot.
If that was too confusing, just remember to determine which squares must be black. Then go thru each row, followed by each column and repeat until done.
Posted by Robb at March 26, 2007 10:06 AMGriddlers.net is THE source for these puzzles, hands-down. If you're at all interested in them, that's the place to go.
Posted by Alex at March 29, 2007 05:09 PMPlease keep your comments relevant to this entry: inappropriate or purely promotional comments may be removed. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br> tags.