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[MSXdev03] Let's Quickly Play CEZ GS's Teki Paki beta (2003)

770 views · Published 13 July 2011 · 13:35 · Indexed 24 October 2026

Channel: FiXato · 2011 · Gaming

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Let's Quickly Play CEZ GS's Teki Paki, a MSX game competing in the MSXdev03 programming contest.
MSXdev is a great initiative that originally had the goal to "celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the creation of the MSX standard".
At the time MSX2 was dominant in the scene, as most games that were still being developed, focused on MSX2.
The MSXdev competitions eventually ended up being so successful for the MSX(1) popularity, that nowadays the majority of games for our beloved homecomputer system seem to be for MSX instead of MSX2.

The first MSXdev competition in 2003 however had only 3 entries, of which 1 was a beta release and ended up being cancelled. The entries, Karoshi Corporation's version of Guru Logic, CEZ GS's Teki Paki beta, and Dioniso's Penguin Race were still released though through MSXdev. Sadly, Guru Logic's download has been pulled at the request of (now defunct?) Aiky Co.

I'm planning to be playing through all of the MSXdev games during an non-narrated Let's (Quickly) Play MSXdev Games series.
After Daniel Vik's Yahtzee and Dioniso's Penguin Race, it's now time for the beta version of CEZ GS's Teki Paki!

CEZ GS aka José Vicente Masó (aka WYZ) is behind Teki Paki. It is a MSX 16 KB ROM and is available for download from http://msxdev.msxblue.com/?page_id=48#.
As far as I know, the game was never completed and only a beta version exists of it. While this version is fully playable, it lacks music and other common features such as a highscore list and a difficulty level indicator.

The game is mostly a Puyo Puyo clone, with some (for me) unique features. As with Puyo Puyo, blocks can break off when they hit an edge, though instead of 2 blocks, Teki Paki features 3 connected blocks. What's more unique though, is that you need 5 linked blocks of the same kind to clear those blocks, *and* those blocks don't need to be connected just horizontally or vertically, they can also be diagonally linked! The combination of the high number of linked blocks required, and the broad linking area, allows for unexpected combos!
Another random uncommon feature is that the next blockset already appears at the top of the playing field, and moves between left to right while your current blocks are falling. With training a bit on when you let the blocks hit the ground, you can make sure the blocks arrive at the right side of the playing field. However, as your playing field fills up, it can also introduce another difficulty since the blocks might end up falling on the wrong side of the screen.

As you can see from the last few minutes of this video where I was intentionally dropping the blocks rightaway to try and end the game, it can actually be a bit difficult to die... Combos tend to occur even when not planning them, clearing most of the screen again.

Overall, I had fun playing the game, and might actually play again to kill some time. It might not be as well-tuned as Puyo Puyo, it still is a nice twist to the original concept.

As usual, this recording was made using the cross-platform open source MSX emulator openMSX. For more information, see the official openMSX project page at http://openmsx.sourceforge.net/
This recording was made with 0.8.1 Development Build 12178, available from http://openmsx.fixato.net, home of the unofficial development builds of openMSX for Mac OS X and Windows x86 & x64.

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