Great Deal (NES) review "Great Deal combines Solitaire and Tetris into a nastily intriguing puzzle with its own quirks. The player picks one of a hand of four cards to drop on a five-by-five well. Three or more cards in a row of the same suit or number, or in a straight, disappear in a cloud of point values. The bigger, the better, and combos give multiples. A joker helps. One deck of cards makes a level. "

Great Deal combines Solitaire and Tetris into a nastily intriguing puzzle with its own quirks. The player picks one of a hand of four cards to drop on a five-by-five well. Three or more cards in a row of the same suit or number, or in a straight, disappear in a cloud of point values. The bigger, the better, and combos give multiples. A joker helps. One deck of cards makes a level.

This opens up mathematical possibilities, but a cheat pause offers intriguing strategy. Most piece-drop games hide the board when you pause. Here, you get a total of two minutes where you can stop the board and move or shuffle your falling piece. Using disproportionate time for initial planning is advisable, creating a constant under-pressure, behind-schedule feeling on later faster levels. The arithmetic of time usage contrasts with the card-counting to achieve a combination, or clear the board at deck's end.

Should the player pass nine progressively quicker levels with more cards in the well to start, he wins. Surviving--using the deck without overflowing the well--isn't enough. The next round's ante exceeds the bonus for using all cards. Thus, most of GD revolves around setting up the perfect combination or, when your wanted card comes last, getting close. Medium-level card counting lets a player plan for his big combination. Sometimes, it's better not to clear the board and take a loss for each card remaining. Puzzle junkies will love trying all possible 4- or 5-chains on level one, to find which gives the most points.

The ideal monster combo is not hard to figure, with a finesse or two giving huge bonuses, yet messy starting boards make it tricky--or impossible. The game may offer a bad starting layout, with combinations you DON'T want: odd straights, four of a kind, or worse, the joker. Jokers disappear with the first match, depriving you of your bonus. With a fair deck, where you can take steps to avoid these unhappy triads, one mistake's still fatal, and you don't need the computer making it for you beforehand. A check for ridiculous starting matches, or an option for one, would've left enough nebulous, yet manageable puzzles. It's especially nasty given the lack of continues or passwords. The natural strategic plateaus with antes so steep you need to tweak the seemingly best strategy are really enough.

That aside, GD provides easy access at the start and exacting challenge near the end. It's probably for puzzle fans only, as a green background, insipid sound loop, and some brown suited chump who cheers on making it to level X+1 aren't too fancy. The fixed deck and four-card hand allow for planning and balance in what a player must deal with--if he escapes bad starting positions. Thankfully, save state juggling after completing a level fixes that.

Community review by aschultz (January 04, 2010) Andrew Schultz used to write a lot of reviews and game guides but made the transition to writing games a while back. He still comes back, wiser and more forgiving of design errors, to write about games he loved, or appreciates more, now.