Sega Swirl was a puzzle game for the Sega Dreamcast developed by Scott Hawkins at Sega of America in collaboration with Tremor Entertainment. It is a variation of SameGame, a genre that began with the release of Kuniaki Moribe's Chain Shot in 1985.
The screen is filled with swirls of different colors. The goal of the game is to clear multiple swirls of the same color. The more of the same color swirls are cleared at once, the better the score.
There are five modes of play. The practice mode is exactly as it sounds. The level mode moves to the next stage once all of the score and combo goals are met. The timed mode is also self-explanatory, as the goal is to line up as many swirls and gain as many points as possible within a time limit.
There is also a head-to-head mode, which lets players play for points against each other. This leads into one of the most interesting modes. There is an e-mail mode, which allows for the game state to be sent to another player through e-mail. This player sends their state to the originating player, who picks up the game from there. This is a slow-paced style of game play, but it is an interesting mechanic that got around the latency issues due to the slow speed of modems at the time. This is especially true with the European and early Japanese Dreamcast modems, which were only 33.6 kbps as opposed to the North American and later Japanese modems which were 56 kbps. Those are measured in kilobits per second, which are a far cry from the megabits of broadband connections.
Sega Swirl is a fun take on the SameGame formula. It's plethora of game modes is also a boon considering it was generally included in magazine cover discs or within the discs of Dreamcast web browsers. It was also included in the Sega Smash pack, which is where I first played it. It's not a game that revolutionized gaming history by any means, but it is a fun time waster if you ever come across it.
Final Verdict:
3 out of 5
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