Get!! Colonies

Description

Get!! Colonies is an NTSC-J exclusive puzzle title that saw the Dreamcast push for accessible, low-cost software in the second year of its lifecycle. Its development lineage is unusual for a console title; the core game is actually a direct port of Colony, an isometric PC puzzle game developed by the Western indie studio Midnight Synergy. Sega initially adapted Midnight Synergy’s game for the Dreamcast in November 1999 as Hello Kitty: Lovely Fruit Park, layering a heavy Sanrio license over the existing mechanics. A few months later, Sega released Get!! Colonies as a budget-tier title, stripping away the Hello Kitty branding and replacing it with generic, brightly colored anime avatars. This allowed Sega to recycle the game engine and target players who might have skipped a Sanrio-branded release.

The core gameplay is a direct iteration of the classic 1990 arcade puzzle game Ataxx (often compared with Othello or Reversi). Operating on a grid-based playfield, up to four local players are assigned colored spheres. On a turn, a player can move a sphere either one or two spaces. Moving one adjacent space clones the sphere, leaving the original in place while creating a new one. Moving two spaces jumps the sphere, leaving the original space empty. The critical mechanic is that whenever a sphere lands adjacent to opponent spheres, the opponent’s pieces are immediately converted to the active player’s color. This creates a highly volatile, back-and-forth competitive dynamic where the board state can swing drastically in a single turn, making it a surprisingly deep party game despite its simple premise.

Unlike many of Sega’s larger properties from this era, Get!! Colonies features virtually no narrative or complex thematic world-building. The experience is framed entirely around quick, competitive puzzle matches. Given its budget nature, the visual presentation is quite basic, relying on simple 2D character portraits and functional playfields. The anime-inspired characters function primarily as cosmetic avatars that react to the gameplay such as smiling when taking a lead or frowning when losing ground. Get!! Colonies was easily overshadowed by titles like Chu-Chu Rocket, another more affordable puzzle title, which was a high-profile, Sonic Team developed, marquee title built from the ground up to showcase the Dreamcast’s online capabilities.