Land Maker
The omens are good!
Developer: Taito
Platforms: Arcade, Playstation
First Release Date: June 1, 1998 (Arcade, JP)
To-do: Play the fan translation and add more about the story.
Land Maker has a very snappy flow to its gameplay, and it's fairly unlike any other puzzle game- your pieces are diagonal, and the goal is to slide blocks together to make square structures. They can be 2 by 2, 3 by 3, and so on. The bigger your building, the better. Launching a piece into the sparkling front corner of any structure will destroy it, pushing your opponent's board downwards, as well as creating a few different powerups depending on the size of your structure. Since you lose by having any of your pieces pushed offscreen, you’re always risking it to fit bigger structures before they get pushed past the boundary. It makes for a very risky and fun back and forth. The exact intricacies of how the pieces move, and when they change surrounding pieces' colors, adds a lot as well. If you're not careful, you can destroy one of your structures with a stray block of another color. Also, you get constantly bombarded with wonderful voice clips announcing your structures. It's perfect.
This game did have an English release, but it cuts out most of the character specific dialogue with a set of a few win quotes. There’s a more faithful fan translation that I’m eager to play (once I can figure out how to bypass a checksum error in MAME…). From my understanding, all of the different characters, each with elemental powers, are seeking to control or bring peace to the last, remaining, Chinese mythology-esque land. There’s also an evil woman and a demon that show up at the end. Each character has multiple different endings that depend on your score. Funnily, there’s a low rank ending for each character that’s nearly impossible to get. I’m very curious about this world and these characters, and I really want to update this page more once I’ve learned more.
The game starts out with a bombastic, high energy intro showing all the characters, and it's such a good sign of what's to come. I think a puzzle game always gets extra points if it has an intro like this. The characters have beautiful designs with a lot of personality, with adorable little sprites that dance around on the board on top of your structures. There’s so many little details in the presentation- each character has unique animations for when they lose to every other opponent. Youen, the beloved gender character, makes the other characters dizzy and fall over with music, for example. It's a gorgeous looking game!
Connie’s Codes: Enter these on the title screen after the intro, and on the Playstation version, substitute L1 for Shoot. There are two code effects, and a third code to activate both at once. You'll see a little sprite of Aifa, Youen, or both when you input it.
-Another World mode: Shoot, Left, Right, Shoot
-Play as Ranju and Gaira: Shoot, Right, Left, Shoot
-Both codes: Shoot, Left, Right, Left, Shoot
Another World mode changes the stage backgrounds, but its other effects, if any, I'm uncertain of. Figure it out, Connie!
There's a very cool fan site for Landmaker that I'd like to plug here, by the creator of that fan translation I mentioned. There's a ton of information about even the littlest tiniest mechanics of this game, as well as character bios, and just a ton of information. It’s super impressive, and the sort of effort that I’d like to match on this website one day.
The PlayStation version
I love the mysterious finger beams and big wet eyes in this boxart. The PlayStation version, first released in 1999, contains the original game as well as an entirely new mode included with it. It's a 3D version of Land Maker with a completely different aesthetic, focused around city building, and it functions like a “solve the puzzle with a limited number of moves” mode. It's pretty neat in its own right, and although it loses some of the charm of the original (there’s no voice clips…!) it still makes for a pretty cool bonus. Each level’s goal is to make a certain size of structure before the board overflows. However, you can go beyond the goal size and get a ton of points, contextualized as your settlement’s population. Going for these extra points can be a challenge, but once you realize that making any size structure will reset the timer for the pusher, it makes it a little easier. There’s a very ethereal feeling to this whole mode. Some pretty good music as well. It’s fun to go through each level and try to bump up your population score just a bit more, and definitely worth trying if you like the main game.
I love this game dearly, and I feel like I'm just scratching the surface of it. When I update this page actually knowing what all the characters are saying to each other it's going to be so good! It's still absolutely one of the genre's best, no doubt about it. I need more people to play it! Go play it!
Thank you for reading!
