Shove It! on the Genesis is an Easy Puzzle Game

Shove it! is a puzzle game for the Sega Genesis. It was released in 1990 and is part of the Sokoban series. What you do in this game is move boxes around a warehouse to get them into special spots on the floor. It is a simple puzzle game, but it can be a little tricky at times.

I hadn’t heard of this game, or the series as a whole, until the mid 2010s. Games like this weren’t on my radar because I was only six years old at the time of the game’s release. I don’t think any of my friends knew about it, and I’m not sure any of them had a Genesis when this game was released.

I know what I’m getting into with this game. There isn’t too much to this game, and it is a fairly simple puzzle game. This isn’t something I would’ve rented back in the day, and I didn’t come across it while I was collecting games in the 1990s and 2000s.

TLDR: It’s an easy game that makes you think, but there isn’t much to the game.

Narrative

If you were expecting not to see a story in the game, then you’d be wrong. This story is in the manual and not presented to you in the game. It is an odd way of doing things, but not unheard of for a puzzle game, or many of the games released in the 1980s and early 1990s.

So, what is going on in this game? You play as Stevedore, “an over-muscled, intelligent type of guy with a taste for hard work.” You’ve been working overtime so you can buy a car. This would make more sense if you were given an amount of money for completing each stage, but that doesn’t happen.

This story is fine, but it isn’t in the game. If you want to read the story yourself, here is a link to the game’s manual (Link). If you bought this game as a loose cartridge, like I did, then you wouldn’t have known anything about this.

Gameplay

There isn’t too much to the gameplay. You have to move boxes around, and the levels get progressively harder the further you get in the game. There are quite a few stages, and things get repetitive.

There are 16 levels, each level has 10 stages. The layout of each level forces you to think about where you’re going to move the boxes. You’ll need to avoid the corners, because you’ll end up being forced to start over.

You can pull boxes, but this is limited in how you can move them. It might take you some time to figure out what you need to do, but everything is easy to do. There aren’t many controls for you to learn, and it can be easy to reset the level once you screw up.

The gameplay is perfectly fine for what it is. This is a simple puzzle game that might be addictive for someone. That is what you should look for when it comes to a puzzle game like this. I would rather play something like Tetris or Puyo Puyo.    

Visuals

The visuals play a big part in this game. The game looks good enough, and it is easy to see where you can move things and where they need to go. It is also easy to see when you mess up.

The graphics look good enough for this type of game. The game uses an overhead perspective, which works well for a game like this. The game is supposed to take place at a dockyard, but it looks more like your character is trapped in a room with boxes, and when you put them in the right spot, you’ll be teleported to another room.

After each stage, you’ll see a little cutscene of the main character pushing a box across the storeroom. I like the way that it looks. It acts like a loading screen for the next level. This doesn’t add much to the game, but it looks nice.

The game doesn’t look too bad. There isn’t anything that stands out as being terrible. It is a decent looking game, and the graphics don’t get in the way of the gameplay, which is necessary as the game relies on having decent to good graphics.

Reviews at the Time

The reviews for this game were very interesting! The European magazines loved this game as it got scores in the high 70s and 80s. The only negative review I saw came from EGM.

EGM gave the game a 33/100. The biggest issue they had with it came down to a lack of content. They pointed out that the game was fine on the Game Boy, where a version of Sokoban was released as Boxxle, but there wasn’t “enough game for the Genesis.”

MegaTech reviewed the game under the title “Soko Ban,” which I can only assume was the name given to it in Europe. They gave the game a 78/100; they said the game “wasn’t exciting,” but it would be good for puzzle fans.

Other magazines were more forgiving of a game like this, and I think EGM was a bit harsh in their review. While I do agree that this should’ve been on a handheld, I don’t think it deserves a score as low as it was given by EGM. As a puzzle game, it is fine.

6.5/10. There isn’t too much else to a game like this. It is a fun little puzzle game, but it got old quickly as I kept playing. If there was some variety to the gameplay, or if it was more fun, then this would be better.

Pros

• Easy to Learn
• Decent Graphics

Cons

• Repetitive
• Not very rewarding
• It makes me want to play a different puzzle game

Conclusion

I was getting tired of playing this game after about an hour. There isn’t anything wrong with the gameplay, but it got very boring after a while, and then I looked up how long the game was, which made this a challenge to play. This made me want to play something else.

This feels like a graphically enhanced Game Boy game. It wasn’t unheard of to have an arcade game ported to the home console, but developers would do something to add value to the game. That didn’t happen here, as Shove It! didn’t have much to it and got old rather quickly.

The more I played this, the less enjoyable it became. I liked the gameplay at first, but after doing the same thing on different levels, I got sick of it. This would’ve been a disappointing weekend rental back in the day. I’m glad my friends never rented it.

If you liked this post, please check out my other posts about Sega Genesis games, such as Dick Tracy and Phantasy Star II.