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** THE PUZZLE FIGHTER SHRINE FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS **
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Author: Giulio Piancastelli (gpian@softhome.net)
Version: 1.0
Last Revision: 10th July 2001

[1]
Q: What is The Puzzle Fighter Shrine?
A: This site is intended to become the main and most important point of reference for all the stuff regarding that wonderful CAPCOM puzzle game named Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, or Puzzle Fighter for the sake of brevity. The site contains some standard sections, as the How To Play section (containing an overview on the game and some stategy hints), as well as some new sections I have not seen in any of the Puzzle Fighter related sites I have visited, as the Record section, where you can be ranked submitting your personal high score (at the moment, PC players only). I hope you would really enjoy the contents of The Puzzle Fighter Shrine, and I hope you would find here useful informations about this great game, helping you to better understand its mechanics and to make your playing time even more enjoyable.Further ideas, comments, suggestions, remarks and whatever you think could improve this site go to gpian@softhome.net - I will always be happy to hear some words from the people this site is made for!

[2]
Q: What programs and/or organizations The Puzzle Fighter Shrine support?
A: The Puzzle Fighter Shrine supports, without any particular order: the World Wide Web Consortium (http://www.w3c.org) providing standards everyone should follow when working with Internet languages (The Puzzle Fighter Shrine follows entirely W3C standards for CSS, XHTML strict and XHTML framed); UltraEdit-32 (http://www.ultraedit.com), the best text editor under every Windows flavour; PowerArchiver 2001 (http://www.powerarchiver.com/) a quite good freeware archiving utility, even better than WinZip in managing .tar.gz and .jar archives; CAPCOM for creating some of the most interesting and addictive arcade games I have ever played, from Puzzle Fighter to Marvel Super Heroes, from Final Fight to Pnickies.

[3]
Q: Where I can buy/find the PC version of Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo?
A: I think you have mainly three choices. First, you can try to find it at bargain price in your city's stores; but where I live (Italy) it would be very difficult or quite impossible to find even a single copy of Puzzle Fighter: it's too old, and puzzle games usually are not "hot games". Second, you can try to buy it online. There are several web sites where you can buy games and software. Here's a brief list of what I've found on a couple of newsgroups and what I had in my Bookmark: Best Buy (http://www.bestbuy.com), CD Access (http://www.cdaccess.com), Chips & Bits (http://www.chipsbits.com), CompUSA (http://www.compusa.com), EBWorld (http://www.ebworld.com), Gamestop (http://www.gamestop.com), The Software Society (http://www.rochnet.net/acatalog), Walmart (http://www.walmart.com), and http://www.videoreaper.com. Please keep in mind that it could be difficult to find a copy of Puzzle Fighter even in those places, as well as in your city's stores, more or less for the same reasons. Third, you can try an auctions web site, in order to find a used copy of the game. Here are a couple of the most famous sites: Amazon (http://www.amazon.com), Ebay (http://www.ebay.com). And probably here is your best bet: The Game Trading Zone (http://gametz.com). What about CAPCOM website? They do not sell Puzzle Fighter anymore (still sell a Strategy Guide for the game, though). You can send them an email complaining about the fact and asking for a copy of a "CAPCOM's past hit" like Puzzle Fighter, hoping they will answer soon. At http://www.capcom.com/support/ here is what I have found: "Looking for one of Capcom's past hits? Be sure to check out the page for the game you want. We also have a few of our 8 and 16 bit games, but you should contact Customer Service at (408) 774-0400 for a listing of titles. Our email address for customer support is megamail@capcom.com". Anyway, some guys wrote me the following lines: "Capcom says that everyone is sold out and they have no plans to re-issue it"; and another guy went on saying: "CAPCOM [..] said that they had discontinued production of the PC version years ago and pretty much wouldn't be able to get anyone a copy".

[4]
Q: What about alternative methods to play Puzzle Fighter?
A: As you surely know, there are PSX and Saturn versions of the game. If you own one of these two consoles (or a PSX2) you probably may find and play a copy of Puzzle Fighter at a reasonably low price (you may check the same websites as Question 3). The Java version of Puzzle Fighter (http://www.capcom.com/online_games/spf/) you probably know of is unplayable. A guy at CAPCOM Customer Support recently sent me just a couple of words: "Thank you for contacting Capcom. Unfortunately, the Online Puzzle Fighter Game is permanently down.". My two Euro-cents are that when CAPCOM says to have discontinued Puzzle Fighter, they really mean it. More, I think the Puzzle Fighter applet is somewhat copyrighted, so it's highly improbable to have that playable around on some other place on the net. Anyway, if you know something about who made that applet or everything else could be interesting, feel free to send at gpian@softhome.net your information and be sure you will be quoted in Question 5. Finally, Puzzle Fighter is born as an arcade game, and you could find a cabinet of the game in your favourite arcade. However, CPS-2 boards have been recently decrypted, emulators have began to raise and XOR tables have been made available (see http://cps2shock.com for further details). PLEASE NOTE: to own a ROM of an arcade game without owning an original version of its board is ILLEGAL. DO NOT ASK for things I do not own nor can provide: DO NOT ASK for ROMS, EMULATORS, XOR TABLES.

[5]
Q: Who helped you to realize The Puzzle Fighter Shrine?
A: I would like to thank several people for their contributions. John Jung (locke@wam.umd.edu), Richard Uyeyama (ruyeyama@best.com) and Hunter (hunter@ecom.net) for writing their Puzzle Fighter FAQs, documents you must read if you want to get deeper in the game and understand its hidden mechanics. Lou77 (ldamis@yahoo.com) for a great help in finding history entries and data about the characters, and for his love for CAPCOM 2D fighting games. Antonio Maccarini (mev0810@iperbole.bologna.it) for general help and overview, ideas, suggestions, friendship and unconditional support. And Edgardo Emanuele Contini Salvan (pag2806@iperbole.bologna.it) for ideas and suggestions I have NOT followed :P. Oh, and naturally I would like to thank CAPCOM for having made this wonderful game, probably the best realization of the "puzzle game idea" in the A.T. (after Tetris) era, and I would also like to thank myself for all texts, html code, screenshots and graphics of the website.

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The Puzzle Fighter Shrine (http://digilander.iol.it/wysiwyg) is a site owned and developed by Giulio Piancastelli. You can use all the content of the site for any non-profit purpose, providing credits for the people who actually made it.