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7.5 excellent
Hop into your time machine and travel back to the sunset years of the studio system, when films were created on big lots starring studio contract players, directed by studio directors. Our story begins in the 1950's, just as the Golden Age of Hollywood is coming to a close. TV (and the Supreme Court) killed the studio star.
Tinseltown Dreams: The 50's, from Namco Networks America, is a match-3 game about producing movies. Mr. Big, studio head, has called you in to oversee production on seven movies that absolutely must succeed to guarantee the success of his studio. Times are tough with TV forming fierce competition for movie theatres. The studio has resorted to widescreen CinemaScope to try and sell more tickets, but what it really needs are some critically-acclaimed blockbusters.
Each film is assembled in a ten week schedule, during which you play ten levels of match-3 games to acquire your weekly budgets. This cash is spent on Hollywood stars, directors, incidental actors, special effects, cameras, backdrops, and countless, countless props. Mr. Big is all bluff and not much help. Luckily his secretary Betty gives you enough pointers to get you started.
Actual match-3 gameplay is typical to the genre. Your gameboard is filled with various picture tiles, all having something or other to do with the movie-making process. Tiles include, for example, movie cameras, 35mm film reels, sound slates, megaphones, stars, saltwater taffy, etc. Clicking on two adjacent tiles swaps them. If this exchange results in a sequence of three or more similar tiles in a horizontal or vertical line, those tiles are removed from the gameboard. (If not, the swap immediately reverses.) You earn a dollar for each tile removed, and more game tiles fall in from the top to fill any gaps. This might result in more matches (we call them chain reaction matches in match-3 fan meetups), which are also removed. Every level has a number of gameboard squares with gold backgrounds. Making a match in front of a gold background removes the gold, valued at $100. Collect all the gold and the level ends.
When you make an extraordinarily good match, or just happen upon one with dumb luck (my personal strategy) a cow peeks onscreen to offer accolades: "Mm...great!" Brilliant. More match-3 games should implement this feature.
A few special powerup tiles are awarded for lengthy matches: Matches of five tiles earn you a giant fan that displaces several tiles (and splits stanchions) or a hammer to destroy a single tile or a genre-specific animation (depending on the motion picture you're making) that removes multiple tiles from the gameboard. Matches of six tiles pop up a stick of dynamite, while matches of seven tiles gives you a sandbag. Some levels have a locked trunk tile and a matching key tile. If you can get the two together, the trunk is unlocked and you earn a free prop.
By quickly making matches, you charge a "Craze Meter" and pop popcorn at the side of the screen. When the popcorn machine is filled, you can click on it's "Go!" button to send about ten kernels of popcorn onto the gameboard, temporarily. Clicking on each before they drop off the board earns you $10.
Stanchions (those red velvet ropes that are fun to rearrange when you're waiting in line at the bank or at Tokyo's Narita airport) act as locks on tiles. You aren't able to swap those tiles until the stanchions are destroyed. This is accomplished by making them part of a match, of course.
Between levels in Tinseltown Dreams you hire cast and crew and select props. If you've earned a lot of money on the match-3 boards, you can hire the best cinematographers and directors and top stars. If you need to pinch pennies, you can go with the cheaper staff, but your movie won't be a blockbuster. All available cast and crew have amusing names like Jack Wayne and Marylou Monroe.
Finally, you're shown a studio stage with all your props and actors and actresses. You can drag everything around and rearrange things as you wish, reversing and even resizing items and placing them on top of others. It takes a bit of time to finesse things just the way you like, especially when the stage starts to get crowded. You can always drag any unneeded props into the lot's prop trunk to clear up stage space. A movie camera icon at the top of the screen shows you the current look of your movie in CinemaScope, so you can get an advance view of any special effects or camera upgrades.
After ten levels are complete, your movie is finished. Give it a name and wait for the premiere! The critics in 1950's Hollywood judge moving picture shows on four criteria: acting (did you hire top talent?), set design (did you place props appropriately?), sound and special effects (did you upgrade your camera and spend money on fancy-pants lighting?), and cinematography (did you attract the best directors and cameramen?) My epic romance, Revenge in Paris, earned $332,055 at the box office, and the critics loved it. It got five out of five stars in all the trades... except for set design. It only got four out of five stars. In retrospect, it was because I placed a poodle on top of the star actress' head. I always thought I could handle a big Hollywood production but it turns out that it's harder than it looks!
Tinseltown Dreams: The 50's is a fun match-3 game. I enjoyed playing it, but it never dethroned my favorite match-3 hits of past years. The graphics, especially the movie sets, are particularly impressive and a lot of fun to assemble. In fact, these sets are bit more impressive than the match-3 gameplay. I didn't care for the way certain powerups removed either the trunk or key tiles, ruining my attempts to combine them. And the mouse pointer seemed to lag just slightly behind my movements. It was barely noticable, but affected my enjoyment of the game. Maybe this lag is because the game takes place in the 1950's?
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