Pochi and Nyaa
A puzzle game of gods, idols, and chain reactions.
Pochi and Nyaa is a puzzle video game developed by Aiky and released by Taito in 2003 for the Neo Geo. It was one of the last games developed for the platform and the final Neo Geo MVS title created by a third-party company. A PlayStation 2 port by Bandai followed in 2004, adding improvements and new characters.
Quick Facts
- Producer
- Masamitsu Niitani
- Designer
- Tadayuki Kashima
- Artist
- Ichi
- Composer
- Daisuke Nagata
- Katsumi Tanaka
- Kō Hayashi
- Platforms
- Arcade
- PlayStation 2
- Microsoft Windows
- Genre
- Puzzle
- Modes
- Single-player, multiplayer
- Arcade system
- Neo Geo MVS
Facts from the source article.
Gameplay
The game uses two 7x12 grids where pieces called Pochis and Nyaas fall in pairs, similar to Puyo Puyo. Pieces can be moved and rotated while falling, and players may accumulate as many same-colored pieces as desired. A falling piece can become a trigger, clearing adjacent same-colored pieces and starting chain reactions. Detonations send nuisance pieces to the opponent, with longer chains increasing attack power. Incoming nuisance can be offset by the defender triggering a chain. A player loses when a piece lands in the top-center skull square. Modes include single-player story, two-player versus, and single-player infinite.
Development
Originally set for a September 2002 release on Taito's NAOMI hardware through a Compile partnership, Pochi and Nyaa faced multiple setbacks after Compile went bankrupt. It finally launched in December 2003 on Neo Geo, with SNK Playmore helping to publish it. Several planned characters were absent from the arcade release but later appeared in the PS2 version. Aiky's assets, including this game, moved to D4 Enterprise in November 2005. In June 2025, Compile founder Masamitsu Niitani put out an unofficial PC port based on the cancelled NAOMI build.
Plot
High above, the dog deity Pochi and the cat deity Nyaa supervise a festival that happens once a millennium. During this event, aspiring idols face off, and the two gods wager on the best performer to decide who gets pampered for the following thousand years. Lured by a promise of pumpkin pudding, Prim accepts a divine invitation and enters the festival, fighting a series of rivals. In the end, a colossal pudding descends and blankets the entire city.
Characters
The two rival gods are Nyaa, who supports the first player, and Pochi, who supports the second. The story mode player character is Prim, a novice wizard living with her parents and sister in the port city of Solciel. Other characters include a young plant-race girl who is a newly born spirit of the world tree; a user of Ancient Arts who guides magic through dance; a strange demon-mage; a white bear worshiped as a sacred beast and mountain god; the spirit of a hero active 300 years ago (a character of the same name appears in Madō Monogatari for i-mode phones); the older brother of Jurad, a judge in the Court of Justice who writes the past and future of opponents in a book of the past (the website and manga suggest he has an alternate identity as a masked man named Red Moonlight, which he denies); the final boss, a mysterious masked person; the father of Paradisus and Jurad, former governor of the fifth chamber of the underworld now retired; a jack-o'-lantern-like demon who is aggressive and mischievous; a dragon-type girl with an older sister; a hidden blue-skinned dragon who is the fiance of Song-Hwa; and a hidden character who is Graber's great-grandson, a handsome hero using a gun with a yellow silencer.
More in Taito Games of the 2000s
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