Money Puzzle Exchanger

Review Introduction:

This is a fun puzzle game from developer Face for the Neo Geo. It takes the intuitive gameplay of Magical Drop and complicates it slightly, which either makes the game better or worse depending on your perspective.

I had played this game a lot and yet still had no real idea what the story was! I thought you were just trying to make as much money as possible. Why? Because money is good. People say it can't buy you happiness - but it *can* buy you Blazing Star *AND* Metal Slug for the AES - so these people are obviously lying.

Anyway, it turns out the true story is a lot of nonsense where when certain people collect money, they activate a rare organism in their body called a "bundorphin". This gives them extreme pleasure. If enough of these "bundorphins" get activated, they will turn the person into a new form (e.g Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos). Watch the intro if you want to see this happening to various school kids. So basically in this game you play as one of two school friends (Sakura or Asahi) who plan to bring down an evil cabal of money-makers by er... making more money than them.

Gameplay: 🕹️

It's very similar to Magical Drop. (There was a lawsuit. Click here to learn more). You move your character left and right and pull down coins from the stack above with the "A" button. You will pull down all coins of the same value that touch each other in that vertical column. You can add to this stack by pulling down more coins of the same type. You then dump the whole stack back on the board by pressing the "B" button. Your objective is to rearrange the coins on the board so that same-value coins are grouped together in a high enough quantity to disappear. Simple!

HOWEVER the coins don't just disappear like the "drops" do in Magical drop. This is the extra complication I talked about in the introduction. Instead, after disappearing they are replaced with a single coin that equals the value of the group of coins you just removed. So, 5 x 1 Yen coins make a single 5 Yen coin appear in their place, 2 x 5 Yen coins make a single 10 Yen coin appear, etc. It's very logical. This goes on until you group 2 x 500 Yen coins together and the coins disappear completely with no extra coin. Magic!

As you might expect, the coin stack above you is continuously being added to line-by-line. This happens faster as the game progresses. You can also add lines to the stack yourself by pulling down twice on the joystick. This is handy to do just before you use a bonus item or when the board is very empty. If any of your coins reach the bottom of the screen it's Game Over, so work hard to make sure those coins disappear!

The complication of the extra coin that appears causes you quite a lot of trouble (+ thinking!) because, as you get better at the game, you will naturally want to make "chains" (i.e. combos). However, — unlike in Magical Drop where this activity is fairly intuitive — here you will always be thinking about where the extra coin will appear and what value it will be. Get this planning wrong and your combo will come to a premature end. It's not very hard to think ahead for a 2 x Chain or when the game is still slow, but once things become really hectic and you are going for high scores, it can get very tricky indeed.

Bonus Items

Two bonus items can be matched in pairs to produce major effects on the game board. Both produce their effects only on the coin values ABOVE the bonus items. So you must carefully position them.

• "ER" = ERases all coins of the same value
• "RU" = This Ranks Up all coins on the board of the selected value(s). So for example 1's becomes 5's and 50's become 100's, etc.

Both of these bonuses can lead to lot of chains/combos and points being scored all at once!

Graphics: 👾

A beautifully animated introduction kicks the game off in style and the general presentation is of a high quality throughout.

Apart from the "money board" itself, graphically, the game is all about anime idol characters dressed in bright vibrant colours. All characters will play in these "new forms" (or alter-egos) of themselves. If you play well, you get very emotive animations of them spinning/dancing/posing with joy, and if you do badly or lose, they will slump in defeat. Some characters even blub when they realize all the money they have lost!

An interesting difference between the Japanese and Western versions is that the Japanese game uses real Yen coins whereas the Western version just shows a large monetary value over a coin. Personally, I prefer the Western graphics because they are clearer, but, really, you could get used to either.

The end of "Solo Play" mode. The overall rating in points depends on how skillfully you played.

Sound: 🔊

Back to that intro again. It is accompanied by a very catchy, atmospheric, and dramatic tune which perfectly sets the game up. The in-game music is just ok, but you rarely get to hear it clearly anyway since it is drowned out by the constant clinking of the coins. You get a number of different in-game tunes and not just the same one repeated throughout. (Puzzle Bobble! *cough*)

Sound effects are good and give great feedback to your actions, and there are some nice speech samples for each of the characters, too.

Fun Factor:

Money Puzzle Exchanger is a lot of fun to play! Although the appearance of the extra coin makes it harder to think ahead, it is very satisfying when you are able to factor it into your chains correctly.

You have two 1-Player game modes to choose between and a 2-Player Versus Mode. Out of the 1P modes I found the "VS COM" mode to be the most fun because you can often thrash the early opponents. Making chains or grouping 6 or more coins together will send extra lines of coins to your opponent's side. There is a certain element of luck to this mode, and this becomes more of a factor as you face-off against the harder characters, but if you are good enough, you will eventually win!

There is also a Solo Play mode (this is called Practice Mode in the Japanese game) which is the best mode to play if you are just going for high scores and want to test your skill unimpeded by an opponent. It requires more thought to get high scores but it's very enjoyable when things go the way you planned.

Like any good puzzle game MPE can be frustrating, but it definitely has that "just-one-more-go" quality.

Sakura explains in "Jap-lish" where the extra coin appears — always closest to you and then on the right hand side.

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Conclusion: 📊

This is a top-level puzzle game with very good graphics and animation and where everything important is clearly represented on screen. The controls are responsive, and once you get better at the game you will find yourself moving your character accurately across the board at lightning speed. However, the game is not for everyone. My opinion is that the increased complexity of MPE makes it more rewarding, but many people will prefer the slightly simpler and easier-to-get-into gameplay mechanic of the Magical Drop series.

It's hard to think of much I would improve! The bonus items are a little difficult to use effectively. And I would have quite liked wrap-around movement of my character e.g. if you move off the right-side of the board then you appear on the left-side.

In the past I've seen a few people say that their maths isn't good enough to play this game - but you don't need any real maths at all. As long as you can use coins in real life you will have no problem here.

Enjoy making money! Your bundorphins are counting on you!!