Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine is an 'Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog'-themed reskin of Japanese falling block puzzle game Puyo Puyo.

The premise of Puyo Puyo is simple but addictive. The aim of the game is to clear your board by joining together quads of beans and popping them off your board. When you pop a foursome, it makes a rock appear on your opponents board so by clearing your own board you're simultaneously disrupting your opponents'. Crucially, when you chain a combo of bean pops together, it creates an avalanche of rocks on your opponents board.

This is the central risk reward matrix at the heart of Puyo Puyo's gameplay and adds a delectable layer of tension. Do you build up a monstrous combo and leave yourself vulnerable to enemy rocks or do you try to overwhelm your opponent with a continual string of smaller combos?

It's a formula that's easy to grasp but takes time to master. I always found Mean Bean's story mode hit a sweet-spot with it's difficulty curve. Every robotic opponent has a distinct playstyle but they get progressively tougher to beat, pushing you to continually blast through your own perceived skill ceiling in an effort to get further. Overall it's the type of game I find endlessly replayable and satisfying to best.

For what it's worth, I enjoy Mean Bean over the original Puyo Puyo because of it's AOSTH inspiration. It's so much fun to see the goofy enemy portraits change from smug grins to desperate, sweating faces when you turn the tide in your favour. The tense Kraftwerk-inspired music and excellent used of well-placed sound effects (an exuberant YIPEE sounds off whenever you pop a quad of beans) only add to the satisfaction when you've got Dr. Robotnik on the ropes.

In Japan, this is not a Sonic related game at all. When Puyo-Puyo got a release in North America and Europe, Sega decided to overhaul the design to base it on Dr Robotnik, featuring a bunch of robots from the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon.

Puyo-Puyo/Mean Bean Machine is a colour-matching game. Two “beans” will fall down at once and you can rotate them. Match four of the same colour and they’ll vanish. At the same time, an AI opponent is competing against you. If you chain multiple combos, you’ll send a bunch of beans that don’t match and can only be removed by triggering a group of another colour next to it. First one to reach the top of the screen loses.

I could only make it to stage 3, partly due to colourblind issues (although I am bad at this style of game anyway). The beans are slightly different shapes, but it’s difficult to identify the shapes quick enough for the reaction speeds needed to compete against the AI.