Dr. Robitnik's Mean Bean Machine

Today I want to talk briefly about a topic that is long overdue: Sega Genesis's Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine.


We've mentioned it a couple times, but I think this video game deserves its own post.


Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine is from the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise.  However, Sonic never appears in the game, but we do see Dr. Robotnik, Sonic's arch-enemy.

The setting for this game is on a planet called Mobius, where evil Robotnik is removing all of the happiness and music from the planet.  He is turning all of the bean citizens of the planet into robots, and your mission as the gameplayer is to save these bean citizens from the dungeon by playing DRMBM.  From the DRMBM wikipedia page:

Dr. Robotnik has hatched a plan to ensure that no music or fun remains on Mobius. To do this, he kidnaps the jolly citizens of Beanville and stuffs them into a giant robotising machine called the Mean Bean-Steaming Machine (hence the name, Mean Bean Machine), so that they become devious little robot slaves, as well as getting rid of them. The instruction manual states that the disappearing Beans are sent to the Mean Bean Machine, regardless of which character does this. The game ends after a face-off with Robotnik.

At first blush the game looks like Tetris or Dr. Mario.  Which is far from the truth.  As Hibernaut Bill Vehige put it, comparing a Robotnik player's game to a Tetris match is one of the most scathing insults in the game.  In Tetris, the goal is to clear lines of blocks. In DRMBM, clearing blocks is a method used to reach your goal to create chain reactions of  bean clusters; each group's elimination contributing to a cascade of clusters of beans that disappear in tandem.  Here's a video of gameplay (the concept is well-demonstrated around 1:22):

The game is based off of a puzzle game called Puyo Puyo.  We began playing it when we set up the studio and have taken it very seriously, even keeping stats on wins and losses and records against each other.  Anyone is welcome to challenge us in head-to-head competition, as we are the best band in the world at this game.