Money Puzzle Exchanger

The Good
This port is very faithful to the Arcade original in regards to game mechanics and interface. Adding to it are three difficulty modes, so you don’t need to mess with dip switches or BIOS as you do on the arcade. Even with a game pad, you can comfortably play just as efficiently as you could with a digital joystick and plunger buttons. An extra bonus is that you can play as any of the eight characters against the CPU as opposed to only playing as them against a second player.

The Bad
As the Story Mode curtain unveils, the features that break this port begin to show. Between gameplay you are staring at lazily produced dithered photographic backgrounds with still and static images of Asashi and Sakura. It’s basically about those two picking fights against other people forming a crime ring which nobody has ever heard of. And a finishing double whammy is both main characters fighting each other over Sakura’s selfish, douchey actions. What a beautiful and cheaply produced plot that isn’t even derived from the manga.

Worsening this plot is that it puts the characters in a seemingly random order so you sometimes fight easy opponents and the next moment you fight hard opponents, not in line with the gradual increase of difficulty you got in the arcade version.

The Bottom Line
Frankly this is where a bad budget went into this game and what it both brought and didn’t bring really messed it up. At the end of the day, FACE really couldn’t save face with this port or make the best of the CD’s space, let alone the PlayStation’s capabilities. A lesson is learned that not all console ports at home can capture an arcade perfect experience. No one is currently missing an English dub of this one.

The Good
If you’re familiar with upside down Tetris-styled games, this one you can get the hang of in a trice. If you’re scratching your head in confusion there are easy instructions. For a varied type of gameplay, you have some versus modes and a continuous mode. The gameplay itself is thrilling as you match and merge the coins together, it’s a pleasure to watch that value increase and turn into points. Your dexterity will truly be tested as you try to clean out that money as fast as you can. For presentation just look at the characters' comical reactions, typical anime series style. Brilliant fun.

The Bad
The first thing you’ll notice that will let you down is that you can only play as Sakura the exchanger and Asahi the debtmiser in the single player and continuous modes. Other characters can only be played in the two player modes. In fact you don’t really get much background information on the characters. You don’t even get any plot or characters’ endings, just a plain credits screen. Good luck finding the manga and folder related to the game.

Music tunes fall short on variety and seem to repeat with short loops and get reused for most characters. You only have a couple of unique tunes for particular characters. There should have been one tune per character.

The Bottom Line
Before merging tiles and objects was common on mobile games, we got this. Despite being a Puzzle Bobble or Magical Drop clone, this title has its own sort of charm to make any retro player that loves money want to play. Doesn’t really have the lasting replayability that you would hold dear, but it is worth a try. It’s a miracle that it did come out at all, no thanks to Data East’s lawsuit. But that’s all in the past now that this title has been generously ported on newer consoles, so you have multiple opportunities to play it.