Overview
Pochi and Nyaa, known in Japan as Pochi to Nya~, and sometimes known as PochiNyaa, is a falling-block tile-matching puzzle game developed by Aiky and released by Taito and SNK Playmore for arcades (using Neo Geo MVS hardware) on December 24, 2003.
Originally in development by Puyo Puyo creator Compile, Pochi and Nyaa plays similar to the Puyo Puyo series and has players matching groups of colored pieces resembling cats (P1) or dogs (P2). The game includes a cutesy anime theme, with the story involving a tournament between the cat god Nyaa and the dog god Pochi. The main protagonist is Prim, a young wizard lured by the reward of pudding.
Along with standard rotation buttons, the game includes a third button to toggle between normal and "spiky" pieces. Rather than simply matching groups of same-colored pieces, players remove groups by matching them with a spiky piece of the same color. It features a unique "splits" system, in which the attack power of a match is determined by the composition of the piece group (namely how often it "branches" off and the length of each branch).
Originally planned to be released on NAOMI hardware, Pochi and Nyaa is the sole original game developed by Aiky, a studio made-up of ex-Compile developers that ended up working on mobile ports of older Compile games. It is notable for being the last third-party game released for Neo Geo hardware prior to the hardware's discontinuation. It was later ported to the PlayStation 2, published exclusively in Japan by Bandai on October 28, 2004.
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