Doctor Fishypants

How Lumines Helped Spark the Portable Console War

When the Game Boy debuted in 1989, Alexey Pajitnov’s Tetris helped make the portable console a huge success. Nearly twenty years later, the classic puzzler has appeared in various incarnations on just about every gaming platform. It is the quintessential puzzle game, enjoyed by children and adults for minutes to hours at a time. A number of companies, including Atari, Sega, and even the mobile phone manufacturer Nokia, have tried to compete with Nintendo for a share of the portable gaming market. While some fared better than others, all ultimately failed against Nintendo and its Game Boy brand.

The first sustained challenge to Nintendo’s dominance of the portable market came from Sony. In 2004, the PlayStation Portable was introduced to Japan with a somewhat meager initial software catalog. A few standout titles like Hot Shots Golf and Ridge Racer helped bolster an improved line-up the following year in North America. However, much of the attention and critical acclaim went to a small title from the then relatively unknown development studio, Q Entertainment. Lumines: Puzzle Fusion was a portable block-dropper in the same vein as Tetris. Players stayed alive by clearing the screen of a ceaseless stream of blocks. Matching at least four colored tiles as the time line swept across the playing field made block clusters disappear in satisfying harmony with the game’s trance-inducing soundtrack. As the levels progressed, new skins were unlocked that seamlessly changed the colors of the blocks, background, and song selection. Like Tetris, Lumines was a game for all skill levels, to be enjoyed for quick intervals or extensive, hour-long sessions. Its vibrant, colorful graphics and superb audio design made the game an addictive showcase for the PSP, placing it in a league beyond the Nintendo DS and its N64-era technology.

Lumines was designed by Tetsuya Mizuguchi, a former developer from Sega behind titles like Space Channel 5 and Sega Rally Championship. After creating the cult hit REZ, Mizuguchi founded his own studio in 2003. Q Entertainment originally created two games for portable systems: Meteos on the Nintendo DS and Lumines on the PSP. Initial praise for Lumines garnered both positive and negative results. Because it performed so well in comparison to other launch games, and perhaps due to minimal alternative offerings, critics began referring to their PSPs as Lumines-playing-machines. Since then, the PSP has established an exaggerated reputation of having a limited original software library that is only recently being rectified with truly unique games like LocoRoco, Puzzle Quest, and Patapon.

Four years later, Q Entertainment is a widely respected studio with franchises like Every Extend Extra, Gunpey, and REZ making appearances on a number of consoles. Tetsuya Mizuguchi set the standard for how music and gameplay can intertwine to create new, innovative experiences. A number of also-ran developers have tried to recreate the magic of Lumines with less than stellar results, while Q Entertainment has improved upon their original masterpiece through sequels on various platforms. Online play, high-definition graphics, and licensed music all enhance the Lumines experience, but its essential magic is still intact.

While Lumines may not have the enduring legacy of Alexey Pujitnov’s masterpiece, Q Entertainment’s innovative take on a classic puzzle formula gave the PSP the momentum it needed during a rocky launch period to quell skeptics and finally offer Nintendo its first significant competition in the portable market.