Swap. Match. Chain. Dominate.
An independent guide to one of the most mechanically deep puzzle games ever created. Whether you know it as Panel de Pon, Tetris Attack, or Pokemon Puzzle League: this is where mastery begins.
How It Plays
Blocks, the cursor, gravity, and five distinct game modes. Everything you need to get started from zero.
Chain Techniques
Ten distinct techniques for building chain reactions, from beginner setups to frame-perfect maneuvers.
Codes & Secrets
Unlock boss characters, hidden difficulty tiers, and buried mechanics across every version of the game.
The Full Story
From a Japan-only fairy tale to a global competitive scene. Three decades of identity swaps and devoted players.
What Makes This Game Special?
Most puzzle games give you pieces and ask you to react. This one gives you a rising field of colored blocks and asks you to think ahead. The cursor swaps two adjacent blocks horizontally. Match three or more of the same color in a line and they vanish. Blocks above fall due to gravity. When those falling blocks form new matches, that's a chain. And chains are everything.
A single well-placed swap can trigger a cascade that wipes half the board. In versus mode, every chain sends garbage blocks raining onto your opponent's field. The deeper your chain, the more devastating the payload. Competitive matches become a high-speed conversation of attack and counterattack, with players reading their opponent's garbage patterns to mount counter-chains from the wreckage.
There's no randomness in the pieces. No luck-of-the-draw tetrominoes. Every block on the field is visible and manipulable. Victory belongs entirely to the player who sees further and swaps faster.
Three Names, One Masterpiece
The game was born in Japan as Panel de Pon in 1995, featuring a cast of fairies. Nintendo of America believed Western audiences wouldn't connect with the original characters, so they reskinned it with Yoshi and friends and slapped the Tetris Attack name on it, despite sharing nothing with Tetris beyond being a puzzle game. In 2000, the formula got another cosmetic overhaul as Pokemon Puzzle League on the Nintendo 64, arguably the most polished version ever released.
Beneath every coat of paint, the mechanics remained untouched. The same block colors. The same swap cursor. The same frame-perfect chain windows. The community has always treated all three as a single game.