Taito’s Flipull joins the Arcade Archives and recalls a Plotting past

Cubic Conundrum

Hamster has returned to the back catalog of veteran publisher Taito for this week’s Arcade Archives entry — so get your brain in gear, as the classic cube-based puzzler Flipull has returned on PS4 and Nintendo Switch.

Released to arcades in 1989, before finding its way to a wide variety of home computers and consoles, Flipull, (or “Flipull: An Exciting Cube Game“), is a unique take on block-busting, tile-switching puzzlers of the time, and tasks the player with guiding a cute blob character up and down a ladder, throwing out symbol-covered cubes in order to clear out a horizontal playing field. The aim is to clear out rows of matching cubes, while then finding fresh chains for the spare cubes that are left behind. your only enemies are the clock, and some often dizzying background imagery.

This gameplay is better demonstrated in the video below, courtesy of YouTuber Retro MGV.

When I first saw Flipull referenced as this week’s Arcade Archives release, I had no idea what it was, but once I realized that it was renamed “Plotting” in the west, the memories came flooding back. I certainly remember Plotting, (and Taito’s very similar tile-matcher, Puzznic), from my early gaming years. The cute puzzler is one of those gaming memories that remains locked away in the subconscious until a familiar flyer, magazine advert, or box art image magically opens up some long-discarded file in the brain. It’s good to see it again after all of these decades.

Flipull is available to download now on PS4 and Nintendo Switch, priced at around $8.