Bejeweled is a series of tile-matchingpuzzle video games created by PopCap Games. Bejeweled was released initially for browsers in 2000, followed by seven sequels: Bejeweled 2 (2004), Bejeweled Twist (2008), Bejeweled Blitz (2009), Bejeweled 3 (2010), Bejeweled Legend (2012, in Japan only) Bejeweled Stars (2016), and Bejeweled Champions (2020) all by PopCap Games and its parent, Electronic Arts. More than 10 million copies of Bejeweled have been sold, and the game has been downloaded more than 350 million times.[2] By February 2010, Bejeweled sales hit 50 million. The figure includes the original game, plus the Blitz and Twist versions.[3] An arcade version was released in Q3 2013.
Bejeweled was directly influenced by a web-based game called "Colors Game" (1999), with possible indirect inspiration from games such as Shariki, Tetris Attack, and Columns, although the extent of their impact on Bejeweled's design remains a subject of speculation.[5][6][7][8]
The popularity of Bejeweled has spawned several clones. Collectively known as match three games, these games revolve around the mechanics of creating three-in-a-row combinations of identical pieces.
Legacy
After the release of Bejeweled, the game has been ported to many platforms, including cellphones, smartphones, game consoles, plug and plays, in-flight entertainment displays, and more. The series would be subject to several non-video game products including casino machines, three board games from Hasbro, a web series based on the characters Snackers and Anchovy from Bejeweled Blitz and more.
On September 25, 2008,[9]Bejeweled was officially released as a free addon for the fantasyMMORPGWorld of Warcraft, alongside Peggle.[10][11][12][13] In addendum to the standard 'Classic' (Normal) and 'Timed' modes, the addon has an exclusive 'Flight' mode, wherein the game begins when the player takes a flight from one in-game location to another, with the goal to score as high as possible before they reach their destination.[14][9] The WoW addon adds achievements to the game, as well as a levelling system.[14][9]
Bejeweled is often considered an important part of the match-3 genre.[citation needed] The series had won multiple awards. By 2013, PopCap estimates that over 10 billion hours of the game had been played on over 500 million downloaded copies.[17] In 2020, Bejeweled was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame.[18]
Further reading
Gualà, Luciano; Leucci, Stefano; Natale, Emanuele (24 March 2014). Bejeweled, Candy Crush and other Match-Three Games are (NP-)Hard. 2014 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games. arXiv:1403.5830. Bibcode:2014arXiv1403.5830G.
^Hester, Larry (October 21, 2013). "Inside Bejeweled: An Interview with Executive Producer Heather Hazen". Complex. Archived from the original on October 26, 2017. Retrieved August 15, 2023. When Brian Fiete, Jason Kapalka and John Vechey of PopCap came across a Russian match-three game called Shariki (or The Colors Game), it inspired them to create a browser-based game named Diamond Mine which later evolved into the glittery, ball of addiction we now know as Bejeweled.
^Edwards, Jim (February 18, 2014). "Here's The History Of The Game That Was Copied To Create Candy Crush Saga". BusinessInsider.com. Retrieved August 15, 2023. But even Bejeweled isn't the original match-three game. That honor probably belongs to a Russian computer game from the early 1990s called Shariki
