Money Puzzle Exchanger / Money Idol Exchanger

Money Puzzle Exchanger is a color match puzzle similar to Magical Drop but with a twist. The player can only combine coins of a certain number and denomination. Two or more 50 coins turn into 100, five or more 1c turn into a 5c, and so on. Coins are continually added to the play area and the player must try to exchange and eliminate as many as possible before the screen fills. This leads to interesting combos and chains. There are two special coins, labelled ER and RU. If two ER are combined, they erase every coin matching the denomination sitting above it. RU turns all the coins matching the denomination above it to the next value.

The characters are all cute anime idols with names like Debtmiser, Exchanger, and Coquetrybouncer.

I got sucked into this one thanks to the twist on color-matching. The denomination requirement adds just enough strategy to shake things up. The CPU is really difficult and ramps up quickly. I’ve been stuck on the 3rd character, Everyworker, for a while now, and mostly play solo to beat my own score. A sad tale in screenshots…

The game was ported to modern consoles as part of the ACA NEO-GEO line by Hamster. There aren’t many differences outside the score leaderboard, but I like having this on Switch and Donut sometimes plays as well.

I tried the Gameboy version, but it was completely underwhelming and the lack of color really took the magic out of it.