Hexa is an arcade puzzle game, developed by D.R. Korea and released in early '90s. The game is an adult clone of Columns. An arcade game originally by Sega.
Overview[]
The player needs to match 3 identical or more tiles in a row (horizontally, vertically or diagonally), as long they match each other, based on Sega's Columns rules, as the Hexa is a clone of it. The more matches you get, the faster the blocks fall, but they eventually revert to their normal speed. Unlike Columns "Magic Jewels" work differently and are called "Pobys". Instead of appearing once the jewels get close to the top of the screen. The player has a supply of Pobys (Either 2 or 4 depending on the DIP Switch) and they can spawn them anytime they want. As the player progresses, various naked Asian women appear in the background (one at a time).
NES/Famicom Port[]
Title Screen
Sometime after the arcade game was released. Hexa was given a port to NES/Famicom by a unknown developer. Possibly made by D.R. Korea themselves, Uttum, or an unaffiliated entity. It lacks a several features from the arcade game including the naked Asian women and most of the stolen assets. Pobys still exist in this version, but there is no longer an indication for how many the player has. Instead of using music from Treasure of Usas, it uses music from Tengen Tetris. The port is also more simplistic than the arcade version, the icon on the logo is gone, and a black background is used at all times. The port seemed to originate from Korean multicarts and it is unknown if the game was ever given a standalone release.
Trivia[]
- The game recycles music and SFX from Treasure of Usas, a game made by Konami for MSX2 and released in 1987, and recycle graphics (not the backgrounds on playfield) from Graph Saurus, a graphic utility (also) for MSX2 and released in 1991 by Bit², and the title screen Icon above "HEXA" is from Plotting (Flipull in Japan), made by Taito and released around the same time.
- In NES/Famicom version inplace of any copyright info, it instead says "FOR GAME STATION". Which potentially means it was made for specific famiclone/multicart in mind.
- Another game that D.R. Korea made was their own version of Tetris. Which has an MSX port developed by Uttum and published by Zemina in 1989. Either Uttum or Zemina could potentially be behind the NES/Famicom version. Though it could as likely of been made by a unaffiliated company.
- The hardware used in Hexa is the same used in Arkanoid, with the exception Hexa does not make use of a spinning dial and the lack of MC68075P5 for protection.
- Some Samsung phones in early 2000s, namely the SGH-N500, also features a Columns-style game named "Hexa", possibly a nod to this game or it's popularity in Korea. However, the Samsung game does not feature any nudity.[1]
- Due to the game's massive popularity in South Korea, many clones and unofficial sequels to the game were made.