Warios Woods

Wario's Woods is a Nintendo SNES puzzle game that added an original twist to an otherwise derivative falling blocks game. You play as Toad (of Mario fame), a moveable character inside a Tetris-like screen of falling blocks. The falling blocks, however, are different colored critters and bombs. As in most falling block games, the objective is to clear your screen before your opponent clears his. A round is over when either the winner clears his screen, or the loser fills his screen entirely.

The primary twist is instead of controlling the blocks themselves as they fall, you control Toad as he moves them around. The blocks, critters and bombs alike, fall randomly into different columns. After or as they land, Toad can pick them up and move them around the bed of fallen blocks. Toad can catch blocks as they fall or he can pick up entire columns of blocks and move them around. He can also pull out individual blocks from a stacked column. You clear blocks by lining up the cute, passive critters with bombs of the same color in vertical, horizontal, or diagonal rows of three or more.

There are a number of built in bonuses/powerups that prove helpful in defeating your opponent. As with many other falling block games, there are a number of ways to "give" your opponent extra blocks. First, a diamond appears on your screen anytime you clear a row/column/diagonal of five or more blocks. A diamond can be any color and is not related to the color of the row you cleared to obtain it. Use the diamond as you would any other block as you clear another row. When you clear a row containing a diamond, all of your opponents stationary bombs turn into critters. This severly limits your opponents ability to clear his screen. In addition, getting diamonds tends to lower your opponents ceiling, hence making his screen smaller and more difficult to clear.

Next, whenever you score a combo, consecutive rows that clear because of previous rows clearing, your opponent receives a full column of critters for each combo you achieve. These full columns can often be easily cleared with a single bomb, and usually lead to diamonds for your opponent (see above).

Another good attack is to clear multiple rows/columns/diagonals at once. The game calls this a breakfast. You can achieve a two or a three way breakfast. A two way breakfast occurs when you clear two directions at once, say, a row and a column of three or more blocks. A three way breakfast occurs when you clear a row, column and diagonal all at once. When you achieve a breakfast, your opponent will receive a falling egg, which hatches into a critter once it hits the ground. Note a three way breakfast will send two eggs instead of one. Sometimes when the egg hatches, an additional row of critters will rain on your opponent. Note that these rows are generally much harder to clear than columns, because they fall onto the unlevel terrain of existing blocks. This is probably the most lethal of any of the game's attacks.