Puyo Puyo Tsu (Arcade)

The second game in the Puyo Puyo series. Its addition of the rather simple offset rule pretty much changed the way we play the game, and is still affecting us today...

Debug Menu
A debug menu titled "MODE SELECT" is hidden below the "BACKUP DATA CLEAR" option in the test menu. It can be accessed by putting the following cheat in MAME's puyopuy2.xml cheat file:  Select the invisible option at the bottom of Test Menu maincpu.mb@002AF6=09

The changes you made in this menu is saved to the backup RAM of the arcade board, and will remain active until you change the debug options again or clear the whole backup RAM from "BACKUP DATA CLEAR" option. The "MEMORY SWITCH CLEAR" option in "CUSTOM" menu does not reset the debug options.

EXIT
Return to the main menu.

UNIT
Rule lock and customize option. When this option has a non-zero value, the game rule is locked to the one you selected and/or customized, regardless of the current game mode. When you change this option, the settings from "LINK VOLM" to "RATE TYPE" will be changed based on the UNIT you selected. You can make additional changes to your liking, but your changes will be erased if you select other UNITs.

LINK VOLM
Select the number of Puyos required to clear the group of it. The only value used during normal game play is obviously 004, but you can change it from 001 to 072.

HARD
Select the toughness of Nuisance Puyo.
 * NORMAL: Regular Nuisance Puyo only.
 * FUTA: Hard Puyos on top row, the rest are regular Nuisance Puyos.
 * SPECIAL: Hard Puyo only.

PRICE
Select the points required to send one Nuisance Puyo. Ranges from 001 to 255.

OJAMA SCORE
Select the bonus points given from clearing the Nuisance Puyo. Ranges from 000 to 255.

RATE TYPE
Select which Chain Power Table to use.
 * 1:Multiplayer Normal
 * 2:Multiplayer Point Puyo
 * 3:Singleplayer

CPU PLAYER
Select the demo play AI. Ranges from 000 to 031. Default is 023 (Witch). Masked Satan (032) is strangely absent from this setting.

ZSTAGE
Level select for single player mode. This doesn't seem to include any secret boss fights or Masked Satan fights.

The game starts from various number of Stage numbers. If you beat the game while skipping earlier stages (ex. directly starting from final boss and winning), you will see bunch of bogus fight records against various characters such as Skeleton-T, Samurai Mole, and Masked Satan.

MONSTER
Lock the opponent character to the specific one. If you select someone other than Satan and Masked Satan then beat the game, you will get a bad ending, because the game chooses the ending based on what character you fought during the final battle.

FLAME
Unknown. This is the only option that does not get saved to the backup RAM. Default value is 000 and the range is 000 to 013.