my favorite puzzle games are lousy with adorable penguins
an almost complete history of penguin solutions in jupiter’s 27-year-old picross series
one of the first puzzles i solved in picross s8, released for the nintendo switch on september 29, resulted in a side-profile picture of a penguin. it took me all of 11 seconds to decipher the 5 x 5 nonogram, but its cute, pixelated face kicked off a months-long quest to catalog every penguin solution in picross history, at least as far as it concerns jupiter corporation, the genre’s most prolific video game developer.
i immediately recognized that this wasn’t the first time i encountered a penguin in a picross game because (a) i tend to hold onto trivial facts and (b) i enjoy taking screenshots of solutions i find cool or notable in some way. as such, my love for penguins—they sit a little higher than goats and a little lower than jellyfish in my “favorite animal” rankings—means my brain and switch memory contain numerous references to past puzzles depicting the weird, flightless birds.
and so, i wondered: just how many of jupiter’s picross games include a penguin solution?
picross s8, as the name suggests, isn’t the only picross game in jupiter’s portfolio. in fact, the japanese company has developed at least 43 of these brain-teasing compilations, all of which appear exclusively on nintendo handhelds and consoles (i’ll explain what i mean by “at least” a little later). starting in 1995 with mario’s picross for the game boy, the studio spent the last 27 years and change dropping new releases at a steady clip, making it by far the best source of picross puzzles in video games.
i’ve determined that almost half of jupiter’s picross games feature puzzles with penguin solutions, and sometimes more than one. this trend spans decades, with examples on game boy, super famicom (aka super nintendo), nintendo DS, nintendo 3DS, and nintendo switch. some solutions were reused between modes in the same game (this is common throughout the picross series), but only twice did recycling happen between games. some games used licensed penguin characters like kirby villain king dedede, sanrio’s badtz-maru, and pokémon reps piplup and empoleon, which i’m not counting for the purposes of this study for reasons that probably aren’t important to anyone but me.
all in all, i came across 17 unique pieces of straight-up penguin artwork in jupiter’s picross series, making it the most popular subject in the company’s history by far.
of course, these findings required hours and hours of extensive research. while much of that time was spent simply playing through as many of jupiter’s games as i could get my hands on, i also scoured fan-curated wikis and gamefaqs guides to make the process a little easier. it got to the point where almost every moment not spent keeping myself alive was devoted to reading about or playing picross. i still find myself both daydreaming and actual dreaming of, say, all the ways to distribute a [1 1 5 4 1] hint in a 15 x 15 puzzle. i close my eyes and see picross grids stretching towards the horizon.
sometimes these efforts were just to grab a screenshot of a solution i knew existed for this story, but sometimes playing a picross game was a total shot in the dark in the hopes that one of the hundreds of puzzles in each game ended up being a penguin. the only way to satiate my obsession would be to have a complete record, i told myself, and i was uncomfortable with the idea of writing off a game as penguin-deprived without express, first-hand knowledge.
picross lord of the nazarick, an obscure switch entry in jupiter’s series based on the overlord multimedia franchise? i bought it for $9.99 on the eshop just so i could get my own screenshot of its single penguin puzzle. the japan- and south korea-exclusive club nintendo picross and its plus follow-up? i learned how to redacted nintendo 3DS games and solved almost 200 puzzles only to come up empty-handed. the biggest hurdle, however, came courtesy of the picross games released for an ill-fated super famicom add-on known as the satellaview.
unlike the old-school nintendo console’s traditional games, satellaview games were broadcast via satellite, picked up by the user’s modem, and stored in special memory packs. some games were always available for download but others, like jupiter’s tamori no picross series, were sent out on a weekly basis, meaning if you weren’t around to catch a certain batch of puzzles, you were out of luck. this naturally makes archiving these games difficult, but diligent satellaview fans have documented five of jupiter’s weekly picross broadcasts, four of which are available online and playable through emulators (none have penguin solutions, by the way).
that’s what i meant by “at least” earlier; it’s hard to tell just how many weekly batches of picross puzzles jupiter developed at that time, so there could conceivably be penguins hiding out in satellaview cartridges that haven’t seen the light of day.
but once the hard facts were out of the way, another question dominated my mind: why so many penguins?
i contacted jupiter to see if anyone was willing to speak with me but didn’t expect a response. the only official avenue i’d found for reaching out was an old email from an outdated source attributed to company president and representative director hirofumi murakami, and i thought there was no way an executive that high up would acknowledge a random email, written in english, from someone not currently working at a major website. fortunately, i was wrong.
a little over a week later, i received a reply from jupiter’s managing director norichika meguro, a longtime producer who’s overseen graphic design on the studio’s projects since mario’s picross. the email, though brief, laid out four reasons why penguins were so prevalent across so many of the studio’s games, including obvious-in-hindsight explanations like penguins enjoying worldwide recognition and being “easy to understand and easy to make into a picross problem.”
meguro also noted that penguins are particularly popular in japan, but it was his final, one-word explanation that really summed everything up for me: “kawaii.”
of course! the answer was staring me right in the face the whole time. penguins are cute. just see for yourself:
mario’s picross (game boy, 1995)
this is where it all began. in case you’re wondering, mario is dressed like an old-timey archaeologist because these early picross games are based around the idea that you’re chiseling the images out of stone.
mario’s super picross (super famicom, 1995)
it didn’t take long for jupiter to start animating picross solutions. sadly, this cool effect is confined to a special “color picross” mode in modern games.
picross 2 (game boy, 1996)
this is the first time a penguin mother and child make an appearance in picross, a concept that’s repeated further down the line. fun fact: picross 2 is probably the hardest game in the series, especially when you move into the special wario puzzles where this penguin solution is found. i generally don’t use tips or hints while playing picross because i’m hardcore like that, but the puzzles in this game are huge.
picross NP vol. 3 - kirby (super famicom, 1999)
as i mentioned before, i’m not including licensed characters from themed picross outings, but i’ll include them here for the sake of completionism. just look at king dedede go.
the “NP” here stands for nintendo power because these games were released via the official magazine throughout 1999 and 2000.
(correction, 11/11/22, 10:47 am pst: since publishing, i’ve been made aware that the nintendo power here is actually in reference to a service that allowed players to download super famicom games onto special flash cartridges and not the magazine as i previously assumed. sorry for the mistake!)
wow, a whole penguin family. very special. very cute.
picross NP vol. 6 - super mario 64 (super famicom, 2000)
this was a tricky case. technically, these penguins are characters in super mario 64, but as they don’t have special names and look enough like normal penguins, i figured it was okay to include them in the final tally.
picross NP vol. 8 - donkey kong country (super famicom, 2000)
jupiter reused the same penguin solution from picross NP vol. 3 here, so just pretend i included an image in this section. i couldn’t bring myself to get far enough in another picross game to capture an actual screenshot, especially one with the massive puzzles seen in this mini-series.
picross DS (DS, 2007)
i look at this picture and wonder what he’s flappin’ about. i hope he’s happy.
picross e (3DS, 2011)
yep, that’s a penguin alright.
picross e3 (3DS, 2013)
the worst penguin of the bunch. still cute, but not my favorite.
picross e4 (3DS, 2013)
you probably noticed that this is an exact repeat of the solution seen back in picross e. that’s because a hallmark of the picross series is rewarding players with extra puzzles if they have save data from previous games. sure, one would putting the same puzzles in a sequel is a little redundant, but it’s the thought that counts.
picross e6 (3DS, 2014)
picross e6 is unique in that it’s the only picross game with two, unique, real-deal penguin solutions, and i think that’s pretty special.
pokémon picross (3DS, 2015)
piplup and empoleon are great and all, but this only proves the pokémon series needs more penguins (we don’t talk about prinplup and delibird).
picross S (switch, 2017)
lots of character in this one, almost like it’s giving another penguin the stink eye for stealing a fish or sitting on its favorite rock or something.
picross e8 (3DS, 2017)
adélie penguins are what most of us think of when we imagine plain old, antarctic penguins.
sanrio characters picross (3DS, 2018)
again, these didn’t count in the final tally but i couldn’t not show them off after all the trouble i went through to get screenshots.
picross S2 (switch, 2018)
another whole family. this one looks kinda like an album cover. what kind of music do you think penguins would make? i like to think they’d be really into calypso. you know, some real steel drum-heavy stuff.
kemono friends picross (switch, 2018)
what the hell is kemono friends and why did i spend $9.99 on this game.
picross S3 (switch, 2019)
probably my favorite of the bunch. just look at him go.
picross lord of the nazarick (switch, 2019)
this guy’s full name is éclair éklair éklare and he belongs to a race of bird people. that’s pretty much everything i know (and care to know) about overlord.
picross S4 (switch, 2020)
picross, not school, taught me that rockhopper penguins are very dapper little guys.
picross S5 (switch, 2020)
you can really sense the fluffiness among the jagged pixels somehow. jupiter artists are very good at what they do.
picross S8 (switch, 2022)
and finally, the most recent penguin solution. it’s very similar to the penguin all the way back in picross e3, but the image is flipped and some of the pixels are different. look, they can’t all be wholly unique works of art, especially in these relatively tiny 5 x 5 puzzles.
so, what did we learn?
picross is fun in moderation.
penguins are cute.
i really need to find better ways to spend my time.
as for me, i’ll probably never play another picross game in my life. please support ian’s video game cavalcade so it wasn’t all in vain.