Now here's a keeper. Sega of Japan has posted a ChuChu Rocket!
Shockwave game, and it's no pretender like that primitive NiGHTS Shock game of Sega Online
yore. The CCR game is a genuine replica of its Dreamcast counterpart, specifically of the Puzzle
Mode. It's picture-perfect right down to the music, and features a complete 25 original stages
of brain-bending Rocketeering. Unfortunately, most of the stages are quite easy and don't
require much thought...only the last handfull get really tricky. But hey, it's totally free and
it's identical to the real deal, so who's complaining?
Check it out!
It's all in Japanese, but you shouldn't have trouble finding your way around.
To get the game started, click on the "Shockwave" link at the top of the page. On the game
screen, you'll note two buttons to the left. The top one reads "Enter key: Start Dash". (At
least, I think that's "dash"...) That'll get the board moving. The lower one reads "Space key:
cancel". If you've placed any arrow tiles, hitting the cancel button will pull 'em back into the
pool one at a time. If the board is in motion, it'll return to its initial state. Hit the
button (or the space bar) while the board is still, and you'll return to the stage-select. Upon
completion of all 25 puzzles, you're awarded with a smiling Chu-Chu thanking you for playing, and
some Japanese text that I assume tries to sell you on the full game.
I'll go out on a limb and predict that, at some point in the foreseeable
future, we'll be seeing a PC version of ChuČ.