About 20 years ago, I had the luxury of being able to play a Tetris variant modelled around the anime, Cardcaptor Sakura (or "CCS"). It had the cast of the show providing voice acting in-game and also included many of the show's popular music. For a long time, I desired a copy of this game but always found myself forgetting to order it on eBay or whatever.
So finally after speedrunning the game's story mode and being reminded by a friend about my having played it, I bought it and now I feel it's time to write a brief review of Tetris with Cardcaptor Sakura Eternal Heart.
The physical copy
This is your standard PlayStation game and being that I bought it in the year 2022 as opposed to 2000 when it came out, it's a used copy. However, mine was largely pristine only having suffered the usual breakdown the game's plastic case would endure after two decades.
The innards of the booklet which comes with the game is not very special but is adorned with details on how to play the game.
The instruction book has some the art from the game but really it's the game itself that really matters.
Playing the game
In the year 2022, no official support for Japanese games on North American Sony consoles exist. The PS4 and PS5 cannot play PS1 discs officially.
The PlayStation 3 is capable of playing this game, but unless it is a Japanese-region system, it won't boot this game without installing a custom firmware. This was a bit of a bummer as I was intending to keep my non-stream PS3 unmodified, but being that my other PS3 is currently malfunctioning, I relented and jailbroke it.
Annoyingly, a PS3 is not region-locked with PS3 games itself so figure that out.
The game
There are two main modes for the game: story mode and battle mode.
Story mode basically runs you through the mainline anime plot. In this mode, you have two levels of difficulty, but the outcome is to clear the special squares as quick as possible with the floor being pushed upward, the whole play field being rotated, and special squares disappearing and reappearing.
Throughout the game, you get cute animations whenever you successfully convert Clow Cards into Sakura ones and get a still from the anime episode where Sakura had done the same. You meet the antagonists from throughout the series and overall it seems to follow the show faithfully.
Interestingly, the story mode made its way into TGM3 as "Sakura mode" sans the CCS licence.
Battle mode is head to head with either another human or versus the AI. The AI itself is rather competent but I have noticed that it plays rather conservatively, relying on special pieces instead of going for Tetrises.
The rules are the same as Tetris the Grandmaster, which are the rules I prefer the most--I absolutely hate having the ability to stash a piece, so this rule set is my favourite.
Closing
If you love Cardcaptor Sakura, love Tetris, and are a fan of Arika's other Tetris games, I cannot recommend this game enough to you!