Puyo Puyo Tsu 4 Player Mode

I recently stumbled across this video from 2014: View: https://youtu.be/MeimELwWrMM


Apparently it's possible to run Puyo Puyo Tsu in four player mode, and I didn't even know this feature existed in the original arcade release. I went around searching and found someone asking how to enable this mode back in 2013, (it looks like they weren't able to figure out a solution on how the setup works): https://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q10100231850

Has anyone else been able to fully replicate and document this whole setup on real hardware and/or MAME? I was under the impression you have to toggle one of the dipswitches on the C2 board to allow this communication to occur but there's probably a bunch of additional steps to this.

Oh wow! What an awesome find. I think it would be hard to find three other people down to play in 2024, but very cool nevertheless. Tsu is one of my favorite puzzle games ever, next to Puzzle Fighter and Puzzle Bobble 2X. My wife and I have definitely put triple digit hours into the Mega Drive version.

Edit: spelling

man does that music bring back memories...

Joko3 said:

Oh wow! What an awesome find. I think it would be hard to find three other people down to play in 2024, but very cool nevertheless. Tsu is one of my favorite puzzle games ever, next to Puzzle Fighter and Puzzle Bobble 2X. My wife and I have definitely put triple digit hours into the Mega Drive version.

Edit: spelling

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Tsu is a very entertaining game to play and watch. I remember inviting a few folks over to run a session, and all I saw were quick matches going back and forth with giant chains. I'd imagine it'd be even more chaotic if you add an additional two players in the mix where everyone is frantically trying to control the offset like hot potato.

I'm aware in the SNES port you could run four players, but it's cool to see that this mode existed from the initial release. I was very surprised it hasn't been talked about or fully documented on how to set it all up.

Wow! What an incredible find!

I wonder how this was made possible! The video description mentions the use of optic fiber cable, but how tf did they plug that?

Puyo Puyo Tsuu still has a very vivid community, they sure would love to play that!

Fredo said:

Wow! What an incredible find!

I wonder how this was made possible! The video description mentions the use of optic fiber cable, but how tf did they plug that?

Puyo Puyo Tsuu still has a very vivid community, they sure would love to play that!

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I found this interview from 2015:
https://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/735475.html

It mentioned that another board is needed to facilitate the communication between two Puyo Puyo Tsu boards.

I searched around some more and found another website that mentioned the possible number of the communication sub board being "836-1118"; however, the web host isn't too sure.
https://usada.yabou.jp/game/acgame_sega.html

The only place that knows the board required would be the owner over at Technopolis. From the interview it sounds like they took a shot in the dark with an YJA listing and trial and error until they managed to establish the connection. I'm not too sure if asking the owner outright would be a good idea (?) Rather, I'm not even sure if they'd disclose that information on how the board functions, what it looks like, etc. to keep the place unique I guess.

I would hope someone else has this board somewhere in their pile of parts and could further document how this works or figure out how to reverse engineer the communication process. Otherwise we only have the stream VODs to work with, a screenshot of the communication process from "All About Puyo Puyo Tsu", and excerpt (from the same book on page 140) that talks about including the four player mode during the development.

That's a good piece of information, with even a part number !

I can hardly imagine a single link board to be sufficent. The YT video description mentions the use of fiber optic cables, so my guess is you need 2 link boards: one plugged on each system (most certainly on CN4 connector); and both link boards need to be connected together with fiber optic cables.

Finding two boards would make this setup even harder to build.

If anyone else owns one of these, that's gotta be ShouTime.

Fredo said:

That's a good piece of information, with even a part number !

I can hardly imagine a single link board to be sufficent. The YT video description mentions the use of fiber optic cables, so my guess is you need 2 link boards: one plugged on each system (most certainly on CN4 connector); and both link boards need to be connected together with fiber optic cables.

Finding two boards would make this setup even harder to build.

If anyone else owns one of these, that's gotta be ShouTime.

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I mean if someone is able to figure out how the CN4 connector behaves or is detectable in-game, maybe hardware reproduction could be made. Alternatively, start off with using MAME then see if there’s a way to force two instances to connect and see how it’s establishing a connection.

Also it wouldn’t surprise me if Shou has a set somewhere.

Necroing this one.

I threw AI at it. Tried some models that stumbled around. Given the "hype" around Astra I tried it out. It picked up the artifacts from the previous models and.... one-shotted this after 20 minutes:


Right now it doesn't send garbage puyos to other players just like if the anti-piracy kicks in.

On the bright side, the preview windows in the middle of the other cabinet's board is accurate.

It's a slopped up LUA script rather than any MAME source changes. No, I don't understand any of it and won't pretend like I do. I'm a mere rails web dev by trade.

I'll throw more tokens at this, play with it more. Soon I'll upload the source for anyone more qualified and curious enough to audit it.

You can 1v1 with two boards. I was curious of where it would render your opponent. Now we know:


Still no garbage puyos. I'll see how that'll resolve.

This is amazing. If anything this fully confirms it’s possible to do through emulation, something M2 wasn’t really able to figure out at the time.

The missing link (in the future) would be to solve how it works on hardware since each Puyo Tsu board comes with a network connector. Just never understood if a communication board is involved.

I'll give M2 a pass I think this is so obscure as it is. I'm sure with enough demand they would've allocated resources to it.

Here's the source as promised: https://github.com/tbender4/puyo2link
Can this be improved on? Absolutely. But hey... this is better than nothing.

Thank you for looking into this and sharing this information.

I found a picture with a strange connector on it.

http://www.ym2149.com/arcadepcb/pcb/sega/puyopuyo2_pcb_partside.jpg

Is this where the IO PCB is plugged in ?

I don't think you need to have a fiber optical cable to get this to work. The fiber is just a media converter. Communicating between cabinets using fiber is a brilliant idea because signal integrity is high and ground loops are nonexistent.

When plugging in the PCB you most likely bridge a gpio line which enables the 4P part if so it should be easy to see in the code.

Yes, the connector on the bottom of that photo (CN4) is how they're connected to each other.

Mame docs (as well as AI, however I'm aware that AI regurgitates whatever it was fed) suspects there is an undocumented daughterboard in-between.

A hardware solution would be fun.

thomasbender said:

Mame docs (as well as AI, however I'm aware that AI regurgitates whatever it was fed) suspects there is an undocumented daughterboard in-between.

A hardware solution would be fun.

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Yeah that sounds about right. I think the story with how Tecnopolis was able to get their Puyo4P setup going - they found an inbetween PCB on Yahoo Japan Auctions and figured out it was related to how System C2 handles communication play. They did a bunch of hardware testing and got it working then brought it to their location.

Unfortunately the owner refused to take pictures or fully explain how it works when I told them this is lost media.

I’m glad you were able to get the ball rolling and activate this mode, can’t believe it.

Swirl said:

I’m glad you were able to get the ball rolling and activate this mode, can’t believe it.

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Me too! Re-emphasizing that AI did all the work here. All of it. I got no skin in this one.

I'm just having fun with it now. Puyo Puyo Tsu over LAN:


Screw it. Puyo Puyo Tsu over WiFi (no VMs too):


Not the most practical way to play this game. But it exists now.