One of my favorite tile-matching puzzle games... This is basically a spinoff of Magical Drop, the classic that has you shooting spheres upward to matching colors. Money Puzzle Exchanger takes that general concept and makes it more interesting -- the spheres are replaced with Japanese coins. Five 1s will make a 5, two 5s will make a 10, five 10s will make a 50, two 50s will make a 100, five 100s will make a 500, and two 500s will disappear. Much like Puyo Puyo, you will be competing against either a friend or an AI opponent, and your goal is to set up chains. In this case, your chains will force the opponent's screen to move downward more quickly. (You lose if your playing field of coins reach the bottom of the screen.)

This is a frantic, fast-paced puzzle game that encourages you to scan the board constantly. There are two things the game does that is very smart to facilitate this: 1) you can pick up as many coins as you want from anywhere on the board, before shooting them all back out, and 2) when you pick up a coin, matching coins on the board are highlighted. Every passing moment is a risk/reward situation. Do you keep trying to set things up for a big chain, or do you hurry and clear some more of your playing field... (gulp) before it's too late?

This game is plenty of fun on your own, but shines brightest when against a friend. It's great stuff, and I also love the presentation in general for it. It's a very silly parody of magical girl anime, filled with lively clownish music and energetic characters that have cute animations and shout goofy catch phrases. This is also an instance where you are treated to hilariously bad translations from Japanese to English... Really sets the tone well for this one, honestly.

Don't sleep on Money Puzzle Exchanger, puzzle game fans! It has been re-released on the PS4 and Switch as part of the ACA NeoGeo lineup of titles from Hamster.