Lumines II

The PSP's puzzle king is back, and Mizuguchi's got a few tricks up his sleeve to get you readmitted to the Lumines addition clinic

If you have a PSP, then you own Lumines. It's a fact. And if you don't, that's just plain dumb.

Lumines is not just the best original game for the PSP, it is easily the most creative. More than a year after its release, publishers are still using the PSP to produce wonky ports of console games. It's not that the PSP can't play these games well (which, it usually can, though controls tend to be a running issue), but the handheld industry isn't yet ready for console games on the go.

Almost a year later, famed game designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi is back with the sequel to the ultimate in addictive puzzle games, Lumines II. If you're not familiar with Lumines' gameplay, shame on you. But alas, there's a first time for everything. The idea is to use two-colored blocks of four to form rectangles of the same color. Same color blocks disappear when connected, the key to the game's brilliance lies in the vertical "timeline" bar that sweeps across the field of play from left to right. Blocks don't vanish until the timeline hits them, so you can build up as many clusters of like colors as you can to form bigger combos.

Lumines II is an official sequel, but there aren't going to be many changes to the actual gameplay. In fact, Mizuguchi and his development studio Q Entertainment believe that the mechanics of gameplay were spot-on in the original Lumines, so making any big changes may tip the boat.

So instead, improvements and additions are being made in other places. Lumines' soundtrack was of vital importance to the ambiance of the game, so it shouldn't surprise that popular music videos will now run in the background during play.

"In order to showcase my vision for Lumines II, we needed to find music and videos with just the right tone, mix and energy to incorporate into the game," says Mizuguchi. And to do this, Buena Vista games and Q have secured the following music videos for the game:

Beck - "Black Tambourine"
Black Eyed Peas - "Pump It"
Chemical Brothers - "Star Guitar"
Fatboy Slim - "Gangster Trippin'"
The Go! Team - "Bottle Rocket"
Gwen Stefani - "Hollaback Girl"
Hoobastank - "Born to Lead"
Junior Senior - "Take My Time"
Missy Elliott -"Lose Control
New Order -T.B.D.

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