Yes, blocks still fall from the top of the screen. Yes, you need to place them in a "proper" order. But, this is Street Fighter, so battling an opponent is where all the action takes place. Sure, other puzzle games have vs. modes, but Puzzle Fighter relies completely on this mode of play. Destroying your neatly placed together gems with crash gems causes your opponent to get a rather unwelcome suprise in the form of more gems. Problem being, the more you send, the more trouble you could be in. The blocks always fall unto your opponent in an obvious pattern which could actually end up coming back to haunt you. There's never been a puzzle game that requires so much thought or strategy. The frantic pace of the game really doesn't allow for a whole lot of thought, but that's the fun part.

While watching an entire screen of blocks dissapear only to show up on top of your fierce opponent can be a spectacular sight, problem is, the rest of the doesn't match this sight. The classic characters from Dark Stalkers and Street Fighter (as are their stages) are all here in their super-deformed style. Each character will perform one of three attacks depending on the severity of an attack, representing light, medium, and fierce manuevers. Massive amounts of destruction will most likely cause slowdown, though this could be looked at as a dramatic effect (You'll know if your about to screwed). Nothing stands out graphically, but then again, not many puzzle games have an all out attack on your senses. The game includes 2 seperate soundtracks, though the difference is minimal. Each track is taken right out of the original games the characters represent.

Ok, so we've figured the game doesn't look great, slows down, and has simplistic gameplay. Look at it this way....so does Tetris. As a true classic that is highly underrated and never recieved the credit it deserved, any gamer owes it to themselves to find a copy of the game. The sheer joy (or furstration) of sending a screen full of gems over to your ooponent only to have them break out and use it for the KO is priceless. For those wondering, the Playstation version is identical to the Saturn version, so you'll win either way.