Well...I got the game Poy Poy (U.S. Version) last night after work.  I have 
played it about an hour by myself and about 2 hours with my roommate.  Here 
is my general first impressions:

This is a very fun and addicting game.  Several times we just sat down to 
play one game and an hour later...

Premise:

It's a fighting game...sort of.  Up to four people run around and throw 
things (rocks, bombs, other players) at the other players to try and kill 
them.  The bombs and rocks come in different sizes.  The bigger items do 
more damage, but also take longer to pick up.  There are also crates that 
have secret things in them that sometimes harm you, sometimes help you. 
 Some boards also have monsters on them that can cause damage if you get 
hit, bitten, poked... by them.  Some of the monsters you can actually pick 
up and throw as well.

Graphics:

Nothing groundbreaking, but nice...and it gets the job done.  The animation 
is good too.  You slide around on the ice board, get blow around on the 
desert board...and it looks very realistic.  The camera pans in and out to 
"give you the best view" but sometimes screws things up.  You can easily 
change the view by pressing select.

Control:

This games SCREAMS analog control.  The problem is when you throw things, 
you can only really throw it in one of eight directions.  It's difficult to 
aim at first, but you get the hang of it.  Your character can run, duck, 
crawl, jump, and dive out of the way when you do not have anything to 
throw.  I think you press the direction pad and one of the jump buttons to 
dive out of the way.  I think the different buttons relate to different 
types of dives...but I am not sure.  When you are ducking or crawling, less 
damage from blasts is done to you.  There is also a robot board where he 
rotates around with a laser and you have to duck under it or jump over it. 
 You also can throw things different distances, by holding the throw button 
down longer.  There are also different types of throws.  The standard is a 
lob, then there is the hurl (straighter and harder), the suplex which is 
throw backwards (VERY funny when you are carrying another player), and the 
power throw (called something else, but can't remember).  This relates to a 
glove that you are wearing.  You pick this before the match and when you 
press it, the item does something special like seek someone or turn into 
fire or something.  You have a meter that goes down when you use this, and 
charges while you don't.  If the meter gets too low, you can't use it 
anymore.

Instructions:

Not very good.  I had to figure out most of this myself because the instructions are 
so crummy.  You can pick any of like 20 types of gloves before the match 
and you really have no idea what they might do.  All they say in the 
instructions is try them out in practice and see what they do.  I also 
don't remember seeing anything about harder throws by holding down the 
button.  It's OK though, because the game is pretty easy to figure out.

Sound:

Very good.  The crowds cheering after the rounds are neat and the sound 
effects during the game are cool too.

Overall:  This is a very fun game and will be more fun once I get the 
multi-tap and more friends over.  It is also easy enough for someone who 
hasn't played to sit down and do OK.  But, I was finding out that it works 
much better if you have a strategy like waiting to throw a bomb at your 
opponent until he is by a bunch of other bombs so they all blow up and 
damage him more.  Or throwing a monster at him when he's trapped behind 
some rocks so it just sits there munching on him. I believe that you can 
also compete in the Poy Poy cup and get money to upgrade you "Special 
weapons"  you then save your guy to your memory card and then you can use 
him against your friends (I think...I have not tried this yet).  You can 
also handicap certain people to make it fairer.  The only real thing I 
would have liked to have seen is multiple levels on the boards.  But, this 
is just a minor suggestion.  If you are looking for a good party game, this 
is it.  And since you are going against human players, the replay value is 
VERY high!

Highly Recommended!!



Donald F. Wright Jr.
Controls and Instrumentation Engineer
MTS-Powertek (www.mts.com)
don.wright@mts.com