Oh, right, I guess I wasn't done with the Game Gear games. Sometimes I forget Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine had a handheld version, as I suspect most people do. Frankly, I'm not sure why anyone would play this version of the game today unless they really want to wring all $40 of value out of their copy of Sonic Origins, or if they've made the commitment to play every Sonic game they possibly can, like a certain bean-loving fool.....

Anyway, I think it's fucked up I can beat this on normal difficulty, whereas anything higher than easy on the Genesis version kicks my ass. I wasn't even paying that much attention when I beat Dr. Robotnik, I accidentally got a 5-chain combo and he sorta just died.

That's one of the key differences between the Game Gear's Mean Bean Machine and its Genesis counterpart. The CPU is much more prone to making mistakes and it's pretty easy to bury them under a pile of junk pieces early, though abrupt changes to the drop speed of puyos beans late in the game and the poor responsiveness of the controls can make this more challenging as your well starts to fill up with fumbled beans. The CPU is far less inclined to cheat, but everything else is considerably more unwieldy.

I prefer the Genesis version for its higher fidelity and smoother controls, but I wouldn't say Mean Bean Machine on the Game Gear is bad. It's just that you have better options, and this should be pretty far from your first choice if you're in the mood for a little Puyo Pop.

Why'd you spill your beans, Robotnik.... Why'd you spill your beans...?

Something something Puyo Puyo. I remember being a kid and finding it weird that this played exactly like Kirby's Avalanche, not knowing better until excavating an early Wikipedia around the mid-00s.

Anyway, Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Pretty Hate Machine is a game I played every once in a while, because--like Sonic Spinball--SEGA is very insistent in porting it on everything possible. I'd play the "Scenario mode" and get a few stages in, until the bot decides to wipe the floor with their fast, calculated moves. I decide I'm not smart enough for what is Puyo Puyo's simplistic puzzle system, and move on.

UNTIL TODAY. I fucking beat it. I finally got to see all the ugly bot designs I never actually saw, and that disgustingly (awesome) Robotnik design taunt me to the end. I got rocked pretty often against these asshole bots, but eventually won! Only for the ending to say "Now do hard mode" to which I said "Fuck you, no" and shut the game off.

I'm still not very good at this game, but I do understand that an easy way to get chain combos is to stack colors near each-other (something a child could figure out) and try to get single colors lined up correctly so they pop and fall in the right order. But time is of the essence, because your opponent can chain combos and throw blank balls onto your lane to mess up your strategy. So the constant question is, do you have enough time to stack up a chain to hit them hard? Or should you go for a quick 2-hit chain in order to mess them up briefly to keep up?

I don't find Puyo Puyo as engaging as other puzzle games, but it's got its own rhythm and sense of satisfaction. I probably would like the game more if I played the original version, instead of this weird product designed "for Western audiences" by coating it in the paint of this Saturday morning cartoon.

“Let’s try hardest level.”

No, game, I don’t believe I will.

I’m not really sure what draws me to try every Puyo Puyo variant available on the NSO even though my reflexes are NOT good enough for these games and I end up really frustrated, but… like, it is fun. The animations are fun. Winning feels good. It’s pretty great, even though it feels like totally random at times.

I rated it the same because I felt roughly the same about it, but I think I like Kirby’s Avalanche more because I like Kirby more than, uh, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, and Weird Sassy Kirby was more fun than, uh, a complete lack of player stand-in. Are we supposed to be Has-Bean AKA We Didn’t Bother Changing the Little Puyo Puyo Guy Who Dances Between The Players? God couldn’t they at least put in Flicky. Come on.

I did appreciate Scratch, Grounder, and Robotnik though. Something something snooping as usual I see. Man though like. I think Coconuts was in the show but were any of the other robots aside from those three in AoStH or were they original? I preferred SatAM because I was at the age to prefer that over Looney Tunes and so I don’t know AoStH as well. I will say this game is better to me than the SatAM-inspired game, at least…

Against my introverted self's better judgment, a week or so ago I went to a dinner party hosted by a good friend. I arrived a little late, and by the time I walked in, everyone was crowded around the TV playing Puyo Puyo against each other. "Yo Iyellatcloud!" someone calls out. "Have you played Puyo Puyo before?"

"No," I say. "But I've played Mean Bean Machine..."

"I don't know what that is. But you should try playing Puyo!" A controller is thrust into my hand, and 30 seconds later I've hit a 4-hit combo and won. (and then everybody clapped...) Everyone takes turns trying to challenge me, and the closest I come to losing is when the most experienced Puyo player dumps junk all over half my playing area, but I manage to calmly clear it all and pull off the comeback.

"I don't get it!" she says. "How are you kicking everyone's ass if you've never played Puyo before?"
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At this point I'd like to take a detour to rank the opponents in Dr Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine in ascending order of punchability.

- Grounder (Stage 8): My favorite badnik from AoStH because of his Inspector Gadget powers, it's kinda hard to dislike his goofy voice. He even cries when he loses, the poor thing.
- Arms (Stage 1): The mandatory easy first opponent, he looks like a chill fella; I'd have a beer with him.
- Humpty (Stage 3): Another slightly adorable little doof.
- Coconuts (Stage 4): His "winning" face is kinda annoying, he might rank higher on this list if not for the fact that you won't see it much because his AI is a joke.
- Sir Ffuzzy-Logik (Stage 10): Not particularly likeable, not particularly punchable; kinda generic.
- Frankly (Stage 2): Very annoying and punchable "winning" face... and it only gets worse from here.
- Davy Sprocket (Stage 5): Frankly v2.0. Never trust anyone who smiles that much.
- Spike (Stage 9): Augh, what a snot nose. He looks like the stereotypical fat bratty kid that bullies the protagonist in every children's book/movie.
- Dr Robotnik (Stage 13): The big man himself. Not quite S-tier levels of annoying, but when he starts winning his moustache takes on a life of its own and it gets really distracting flipping up and down. His "HUAHUAHUAHUA" when you lose against him is worth some extra points on its own.
- Dynamight (Stage 7) - The most shit-eating "winning" face on this list so far.
- Dragon Breath (Stage 11) - Now we're entering the S-tier of punchability. This prick looks more like a pig than a dragon, and his "winning" face looks... perverted. He looks like he's ogling at girl dragonpigs while he's beating you at Puyo and it's utterly infuriating.
- Scratch (Stage 12) - "I'm winning this one by fair means or fowl." How apt that his entire thing is chicken-related puns because this guy is a gigantic cock. Puts on an extremely skeevy smirk when he's in the lead - real "you can't touch me, do you know who my dad is?" vibes here. Also, he has teeth. WHY DOES A CHICKEN HAVE TEETH
- Skweel (Stage 6) - The champion, nay, Grand Master of Punchability. This damn cylindrical purple pig on wheels already has the most aggravating smile, but when he's in the lead he starts swinging back and forth like a giant purple dick. Can you imagine trying to focus on the falling-block puzzle with this self-satisfied pig face is flopping back and forth in your peripheral vision?
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Ahem, back to the story.

"I keep winning," I tell my friend, "Because you honed your skills against cutesy anime characters, and I honed mine against a giant swinging purple dildo." Well, I didn't say that because it would have led to more questions than answers, but that just added to my mystique.

Mean Bean Machine is essentially nothing more than a Puyo Puyo reskin, but through its wonderfully expressive and smug smarmy character designs it manages to be a far better teacher than Puyo Puyo, by harnessing the power of hatred. Back when I was in middle school and before I could buy alcohol, there was nothing more addictive than finally wiping the bloody smirk off each opponent's face, and I trained tirelessly to that end. It's been many years since I last touched Mean Bean Machine, but I can still beat most people at Puyo Puyo, and a quick playthrough has shown that I can still beat Easy and Normal modes within 1-3 credits. The principles of planning ahead and setting up good combo strings have been seared into my subconscious by the sweaty pigdragon perv.

Thank you, Dr Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, for giving me an extremely niche life skill and briefly making me a celebrity. All it cost me was some longstanding unresolved anger issues.

A particularly bizarre playground rumor I encountered back in 93 was that you could unlock the first level of Dr.Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine if you destroyed every badnik in Sonic the Hedgehog 3. If I had to guess, the origin of this rumor probably had something to do with Mean Bean being advertised on the back of Sonic 3's manual. Kids are dumb. I'm still dumb, but back then I was dog dumb, so every time I rented Sonic 3 I made sure I was absolutely thorough when it came to destroying badniks, despite the fact I could just rent Mean Bean Machine instead.

Eventually I wised up. I don't think anyone back then really had any concept of what Puyo Pop was, and up to that point the only puzzle game I ever played was Tetris on the Game Boy. Mean Bean Machine stomped my ass, but after a couple of rentals I was able to acclimate to the gameplay and reliably get to Coconuts. This is about the point in the game where the AI starts to actively compete against you rather than lazily fill its well with garbage while you learn the ins and outs of stacking puyos beans. I was only able to get past Coconuts a few times, usually through dumb luck, leaving much of the rest of the game a mystery to me. At least until I found a password to send me right to Dr.Robotnik, who proceeded to savage me so ruthlessly I decided to put the game down.

I've picked Mean Bean up again in the years since and have found it to still be pretty brutal. A few levels in, the AI will open every game by slamming beans down with a level of precision that makes it clear the AI knows what beans are coming several drops in advance, allowing them to build combos that will suffocate your well early. Basic movement is a bit sluggish, and beans connect pretty quickly, making the window to spin a piece before it fuses together incredibly tight. This makes play at the top of the well very difficult, and failure quickly cascades into unwinnable scenarios. I'm sure there's harder Puyo games out there, but the poor controls and relentless nature of the AI makes Mean Bean a real bastard of a game.

Recently I've fallen quite ill. I've developed a disease of the mind where I'm compelled to buy physical copies of every single Sonic the Hedgehog game I can find, and of course I'm starting with the Genesis titles. Mean Bean set me back 45 dollars, and that was actually a deal. I was fairly confident I would put it in, game over to Coconuts half a dozen times, go "well that wasn't worth the money," and put the game back on my shelf where it would sit undisturbed for years.

But something weird happened. I put the cart in, started it up, and suddenly everything just clicked. I was stacking beans in all the right places, and while I still game overed a few times, it never took me more than a couple attempts to beat one of Dr.Robotnik's minions. I finally got to the man himself, and after nearly 30 years of trying and failing, I finally saw the credits roll.

"Let's try normal level!"

No thank you.