Tetris Attack

Tetris Attack is a puzzle game released in 1996, developed by Intelligent Systems (the famed studio behind Famicom Wars/Advance Wars). However, it was merely a reskinned localization of the 1995 Japanese puzzler Panel de Pon; the latter had fairies, the former Yoshi and company, and a later release, Pokémon Puzzle League (and its GBC port Pokémon Puzzle Challenge), well...go figure. The most recent release is Dr. Mario and Puzzle League (Dr. Mario and Panel de Pon in Japan) for the Game Boy Advance, released in late 2005. Unfortunately, the Game Boy Advance port is rather limited and does not include all of the features the earlier incarnations had.

It is worth noting that in 2002, Nintendo released Nintendo Puzzle Collection, a Japan-only release, featured Panel de Pon amongst Dr. Mario and Yoshi's Cookie; a US release was planned, canceled, and slowly faded into obscurity. This is the most advanced version of the game known to date, with support for up to four players (the previous games had only allowed two).

Clones and Ports
Many clones have tried to capture the essence of Tetris Attack -- with marginal success. Worth noting are TetAttack for the Palm, Crack Attack! for most OSes, and TAttack, Panel Attack, and the (aptly named) Panel de Pon Programming Crusade in C Plus Plus, or PDPPCCPP, all for Windows. TAttack and the PdPPCCPP have been known to discontinued.

Panel Attack uses slightly tweaked forms of the main characters for in-game play. TAttack, by comparison, used the girls from the Japanese bishoujo game Kanon, before switching to an owl, which demonstrated character animation scripting. However, the backdrop used for the "owl stage" is still from Kanon.