In addition to Mr. Driller, the other GC puzzle game at the show was Kemco’s Egg Mania. It was quite interesting in that I felt I was technically playing a game that was opposite of Mr. Driller. In Mr. Driller, you drill downwards toward your goal. In Egg Mania, the goal is to stack puzzle pieces so that your character can hop on them to catch an air balloon at the top before your opponent does the same.

Basically it works like this: first you and your opponent start out at the bottom, and then puzzle pieces in Tetris and non-Tetris shapes fall down. You have to jump to grab the pieces you want. Once you get hold of a piece, you can rotate them clockwise or counterclockwise, and put the piece wherever it fits. And if you decide to change your mind, you can even discard it. Ultimately, your goal is to stack yourself up towards the top. If you are thinking to yourself that you could just stack up vertical bars and other pieces randomly to form a thin tower, it will not work. When you stand on those pieces, they will break because there is no foundation to support you.

As you get deeper into the game, obstacles will make you fall down to the bottom where you will be brought back up by an animal such as a bird or a fish. You do not die, but you lose valuable time. There are also creatures such as birds and bats that will attempt to steal the pieces you are holding. Items also fall from above, and these include shoes that speed you up for a short time and cement that fills in the holes and adds layers to your blocks. There is also a bomb that you can throw at your opponent, but the twist is that your opponent can catch it and throw it back at you, resulting in a game of “hot potato”. When the bomb explodes, it will break your pieces, or if they hit you, it will cause you to fall down.

I completed all nine rounds of the default mode without any problem. Both Egg Mania and Mr. Driller may not have that much replay value when playing alone. After all, unlike Tetris, both games have a goal; the game is beatable. So the question after you beat both of these games is, will you come back and play it again? Egg Mania offers a versus mode, which is probably the meat of the game since competing with a human being is always more entertaining than competing with the computer.

If I had to choose between Mr. Driller and Egg Mania, I would go for Mr. Driller for now because of its refreshing artwork, multiplayer mode, and its possibility to link up with the GBA. That is not to say you should not give Egg Mania a try. It is a new twist on the Tetris concept. It also features Japanese anime-quality artwork.

The game will hit shelves in Japan at the end of this month. (It has already shipped in North America.)