I learned a new phrase today, nonogram. Otherwise known as paint-by-numbers, nonograms are picture logic puzzles in which cells in a grid must be colored or left blank according to the numbers at the side of the grid in order to reveal a hidden pixel art-like picture. Nonograms are pretty popular on Nintendo consoles and are often called Picross, a portmanteau of picture and crossword. I’ve previously reviewed Picross DS and Rittai Picross, but I never come across the word nonogram, not until now.

One of the Picross titles available on Nintendo’s latest console would be PICROSS S GENESIS & Master System Edition. As you can guess from the title, completing the puzzles in the game will unveil pixel-art of video game characters from popular SEGA GENESIS and Master System titles. This is one Picross title meant for retro gamers looking for a tinge of nostalgia.

RETRO PUZZLES GALORE

There are a total of 480 puzzles within the game, and most of the puzzles provide an avenue for players to use a “Hint Roulette” which reveals the blacked-out cells for one horizontal row and one vertical row, making it an easier start for players.

With or without the Hint Roulette, some of the Picross puzzles can be real time sinks. I’ve spent around 20 minutes on individual puzzles which can be maddening and challenging at the same time. Mistakes can be common as you try to logically decide which cells to shade and a mistake may only be detected late in a puzzle, undoing the amount of work you’ve put in. Some of the tougher ones that I solved include the following pixel art:

  • Sir Astral from Shining Force II (SEGA GENESIS – 1993) (35 minutes)
  • Rune from Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium (SEGA GENESIS – 1993) (29 minutes)
  • Monster Indara from Kung Fu Kid (SEGA Master System – 1987) (20 minutes)
  • Gwyn from Beyond Oasis (SEGA GENESIS – 1994) (17 minutes)
  • Centurion from Altered Beast (SEGA Master System – 1988) (16 minutes)

TIPS AND TRICKS

Upping the ante, Picross S has Mega Picross and Color Picross game modes which are even more difficult than the normal Picross puzzles in the game. Wikipedia does list out several approaches to tackling a nonogram puzzle. Basic techniques such as simple boxes and simple spaces are useful for easier puzzles but these make way to conditional methods such as forcing, gluing, joining and splitting, punctuating and mercury.

The game’s ability for players to “mark” cells instead of shading them directly, which then allow for advanced reasoning techniques such as contradictions, is a useful feature on larger 15 X 15 grids. I don’t really prefer this trial-and-error technique as it tends to consume a lot of time as there’s a fair bit of back-tracking and rework.

VERDICT

I love puzzle games, and I’ve been playing Tetris since the age of 8. PICROSS S GENESIS & Master System Edition is a title that I rate highly, so much so that it has made the Nintendo Switch a console I can’t do without, and this is coming from a guy who has a whole bunch of current-generation consoles and a couple of gaming PCs around the house. Nineoverten.com rates the game at a perfect 5 out of 5.

The game is available for direct download for USD 9.99. You can check it out over here.