Lumines is a series I enjoy heavily. If you’ve played the critically acclaimed Tetris Effect, it’s the series that allowed that game to be as good as it is - Enhance had lots of practice making a rhythmic puzzle game and had figured out what works and what doesn’t. The Lumines series, mostly headed under Q? Entertainment (aka Enhance before Enhance), has a lot of different games and thus a lot of different content. Let’s go over how you probably should do all of it.
Note that I’m definitely not the end all be all, but as of writing this I’ve 100%ed most games in the series, including some of the horrendous playtime requirements, so I do know what I’m talking about.
Also note that I will only be linking to official places to find games, so you won't find any ROMs on this page. That doesn't mean they're not out there!
Lumines is an action-puzzle-music game. You get 2x2 blocks of pieces that can be one of two colors, and you have to sort them into 2x2 blocks of single color. As you make blocks, a sweeper bar will come and destroy the blocks you’ve made, which is how you get points and progress through the game. The sweeper bar takes 8 beats of whatever music the game is playing to cross the entire field, so you’ve got to keep somewhat in sync with the music so it doesn’t ruin your plans.
And if you’ve never played the game before, you should play Lumines Remastered. It is by far the best point to start due to its incredibly high accessibility as of now, best control responsiveness, and being a remaster of the first game. It’s on all modern consoles and PC, and it goes on sale pretty often if the regular price isn’t your thing.
If you’re planning on playing everything Lumines has, you should also start here. 100% this game, it's hard but not dumb. Once you’re good enough to do that, everything else will be easy enough to take care of, and it’s the least frustrating main game to do this on. Here’s what you’ll have cleared through:
Weirdly, this game takes its puzzle and mission mode from Lumines 2 and not the original. I think this makes it a more complete package.
If you didn't enjoy your time with Remastered, or you did but you've decided you've had your fill, you're good to stop here. Lumines games don't get too radically different. If you want more to do however, keep reading!
Now that we’ve done that, you’re in it. You know it. You can do it. And if you want more, your next step depends on how much difficulty you’re willing to go through, and how much you want.
Your first choice and easiest pick-up will be Lumines 2, the direct PSP sequel. PSP roms are easy to find, PPSSPP is an incredibly competent emulator and isn’t hard to run on even a phone. It also happens to be my favorite title in the series. If you pick this, unlock every skin, but DON’T go for every single S+ rank. The time based S+ is 50 hours, while the final time-based skin unlock is at 20 hours. (Yeah, you’re playing for a while regardless. It kinda sucks. If that’s worth it to you, go for it!) Here’s the new stuff you’ll play:
The middling choice here is Lumines LIVE!, and that exclamation point is required. It’s very similar to Lumines 2 in visuals (they were released simultaneously), but it has a bit more to go for it if you’re willing to pay. This game works on any Xbox that’s a 360 or newer, but it’s all segmented with DLC. Hey, at least it’s all still purchasable.
There is a solution though - if you can find a disc of Qubed on eBay or a used game store, that’ll definitely be cheaper than buying the game and DLC outright, and it’s got all of it included! (If you’re on X360, it’ll come with E4 and Rez HD too, which is pretty neat. That won’t work on newer consoles however.) You can also find the roms and play on Xenia, which absolutely works, but getting the roms is a pain. If you pick this, same deal as 2 - unlock every skin, but don’t 100% it. But what do you get?
The last one in this section is Lumines Supernova, which is a delisted PS3 game. Yeah, that’s gonna be hard…either you get a PS3, mod it, and install it that way, or you set up a PS3 emulator and get the roms, which are even harder to find. However, it does have the most available. If you pick this, I think you’re good to 100% it, as from my understanding there are no outlandish time requirements in any capacity.
You’ve probably noticed by now that between the three, there’s no perfect parity. Licensing music is an absolute pain, which is visibly apparent in pre-release things, cutting room floor material, and the L2 region debacle. However, they do all have the core L2 skins, which is the main point here. Pick just one and you’re golden. (You will have to do Puzzle mode and Mission mode again to do everything - skip if you’d like to. I understand.)
If you’re bad at choosing things, go with Lumines 2. It’s my favorite in the series, the licenses are great and they get a little silly with it. It got me into Fatboy Slim. Can’t argue with that.
That’s not a joke.
Lumines: Electronic Symphony is a pretty unique Lumines game, being mostly made of licensed songs, having character power-ups, a Master mode that by this point you’re probably good enough for, trying out 3D graphics, and also whatever World Block is. And because it’s mainly licensed, it’s stuck on the Vita, which has no emulator that can cleanly run the game as of now. Nice.
The Vita is cool though, and it’s INSANELY easy to hack, so your only buy-in is the Vita itself along with whatever microSD to Vita adapter and microSD card you get. With said hacked Vita you can get the game for free, as well as any other Vita game you'd like, and it'll play PSP roms as well. Anyway, you’re safe to 100% this title.
By this point, you’ll be receiving diminishing returns for each game you play. New skin counts start to dwindle, and there's not really any new features to comment on. However, there's one more essential game, and it breaks this form.
Feature phone games, flip phone games, J2ME games, whatever you call em, they did some weird things. Lumines had an odd amount of these, but most of them are lost media as of writing this. Block Challenge isn’t though! And it’s cool as hell! By this point in time you probably want something new, so here comes Arcade mode! Preset boards, several new powerups, different shaped pieces, a third fucking color, all in classic midi-and-pixels style. Absolutely fantastic. You don’t need to 100% this one, but go for all gold trophies on at least one difficulty on Arcade mode.
It also has 3 exclusive skins and its own small puzzle mode with a few exclusive puzzles. It’s pretty neat. J2ME emulators are plentiful. I recommend J2ME Loader on Android, but you can use any of em.
And you’re done! You had a fun time, and Lumines has shown you what it offers. Past this point it’s diminishing returns, as I’ve already mentioned. It’s all done. You’ve seen it.
Well, it's not all done, but…
This is a little satirical calling it that, but it really does become monotonous to experience everything. Past this point, if you’re not vaguely a masochist or you didn’t enjoy every second of your previous playing, you really probably should stop here. It also becomes a little sad, because you CAN’T experience everything. We'll get to that eventually.
At this point, you’ll really want to join the Lumines discord. The people there know where things are, although I don't recommend jumping in JUST to ask for file locations. Make some discussion, post some scores, cite this article, argue about beans, anything like that.
And yes, I know some people hate joining Discords just to find game stuff. I don't like it either. I'm working on it.
It’s more likely than you’d think.
Let’s start with easier access. Lumines: Puzzle and Music is playable on Android devices with some setup. With the setup I’ve used, the Japan specific packs are missing, but it’s still got some slammin skins. With a little IAP hacking of the JP region app, it’s likely all there. The Rez pack is a fan favorite.
Honestly if this weren't a mobile game that needed you to do some file fuckery to get things running nowadays, this would also be in the essentials. I've got a soft spot for this one, it's great.
Lumines: Touch Fusion released in 2009, EA’s mobile Tetris was in 2011. Checkmate.
Touch Fusion just has one basic sack of 5 skins for you. There was a second one, the Comic pack, but unfortunately as of now that’s lost to time. Maybe this one can be hacked in too? I’d be surprised. You'll need a 32bit iOS device to run this, and you'll have to jailbreak the device to install the .ipa.
The original Lumines, as well as Lumines Plus, share their own puzzle mode, including a neat set of x2 puzzles where you do the same thing twice to solve them. It also has Single Skin mode, which is like Skin Edit mode, but with only one skin.
The original on PSP has an identical skin set to Remastered, while Plus trades some licenses for a few skins from the two set. Take your pick, although pretty much everyone recommends 1 over Plus.
Another J2ME game, In The House Ibiza '10, has its own pack of 10 midi skins, this time recreations of house songs from Defected Records. This also has DigDown mode if you didn't choose to play Lumines Supernova earlier, which I assume you likely didn't since it's the most difficult of the three to access.
At this point, there's not really anything new to do. Now would be a great time to play the games in the 2/Live!/Supernova trio that you didn't pick, as that's about it. Doing so is definitely worth it - if you picked 2 you didn't get the holiday pack, and if you picked not 2 you missed out on a fun set of licenses. In addition, Supernova does have its exclusive skins you might as well try if you haven't.
Once you've done that though, you're actually done, there's really no joke there. Everything Lumines offers in 2023 has been done, beyond going for full 100%. Which, to be honest, if you've made it this far, maybe you're willing to do! I certainly am.
So, now it's time to go back through the games, finish Puzzle and Mission mode a bunch of times, get every last achievement and trophy, get all the outlandish time requirements. And while you're doing that, let me name a couple games we've completely ignored by this point.
Lumines 2 had a demo created for Adobe Flash, known as Taster Edition. 45 second time attack only, no audio, five skins total, kinda janky. The block skins are pretty neat, more intricate than the final game in some cases. It takes 5 minutes to see everything, so you might as well.
Lumines Puzzle Fusion PC is a worse 2/Live! with the same 100% requirements. I'm going to be fully honest, it gets so boring, especially if you've already done everything as it offers nothing new whatsoever. It does allow you to play with only the mouse, which earned it the great description of "the office Lumines game" from someone in the discord. I think it was Revenant? Shoutouts to Revenant.
It got delisted from Steam ahead of Remastered's release, but it's oddly still available on WildTangent. It's not worth buying, just get it off MyAbandonware or something if you really want to.
That's everything. Once you've 100%ed the games that I've mentioned, there is quite literally nothing left to do in the Lumines series. I'd say double check that you got every game, but you probably already made a chart to check that. And that doesn't necessarily mean that you want to stop there. And you might not have to, with some luck.
I'm going to move from this point on assuming that you did in fact 100% every Lumines game that I've listed, and you still want more. And maybe that's not you, and you didn't do all this, and you're just reading this for entertainment instead of an actual guide on playing everything Lumines has to offer.
Either way, the best thing you can do right now is find lost media. I'm officially putting you on a quest. Go out there on the internet and real life, and locate Lumines games that time forgot, either accidentally or by design. Here's what we know, vaguely ordered by likeliness to be found.
Starting simple, there's a web demo of Block Challenge that I'm convinced is actually archived on the Wayback Machine, but it's not actually playable. My guess is that if you grab whatever Java applet it is and shove it into Flashpoint, it'll play just fine. That shouldn't be difficult to do.
Lumines: Puzzle and Music. The Ultra Japan pack and Namco pack are both currently considered lost media as they're not accessible in any version of PxM as of now. We actually do have the required files, but they're blocked by an IAP gate that can't be purchased because the game has been sunsetted and the servers are down. This means that they'll need to be hacked to be unlocked.
In addition, we have no way to play PxM on iOS devices. An .ipa for the game would need to be found, and a way to insert the files on the device so it could be playable would be needed. I actually used to have an .ipa, but the Google Drive link I had died. How ironic for me.
Back to things we probably do have, the Comic pack of Touch Fusion is also lost. I think it's in the game files and just needs hacking in, but I'm not entirely sure on that. It's probably lost completely, but it's worth checking first.
There was also an Android version of Touch Fusion, but little is known about it. The most we have on it is a very low quality screenshot of it in Android Market, back when it was Android Market and not Google Play.
Something I have less hope on are the various Japan only J2ME games. These range from being service exclusive to phone exclusive, and they had downloadable skins too. Anything at all would be a win there. The specific details on each version could make their own article.
And speaking of J2ME, Ibiza '10 had a mission mode, a puzzle mode, and another challenge mode known as Club Mix mode, but that was also downloadable content and isn't in any .jar files I've been able to find.
Ibiza '10 also had an Xperia Play version. Not much is known there, probably because it was Ibiza '10 on the Xperia Play.
Lumines Online was an online service-ish game focused on multiplayer versus, with some single player as well. Rather than puzzle or mission mode, it has space mode, which was a level based thing with preset boards and various goals. It looks so damn cool. It also had a wide variety of licenses, and a couple of its own exclusive skins. It died in 2010 and apparently had ridiculous DRM, making it the hardest game to find that actually released.
Lumines VS never released. It seemed to be a sort of combo of Online and PxM, but little was actually known. If it leaked, it likely wouldn't actually be playable, but who knows.
Hey, how about the original prototype of the game? Apparently done on PC and had a few skins that didn't make it to the final game. It was never even planned to release, but it existed.
None of this is playable. If you have absolutely any idea where to search, it's worth letting us know.
Alright, enough of the sadness. You want more Lumines game and you want to play them now. Other people thought so too, so they took a more "do it yourself" approach. These actually exist. You can go play em.
If I didn't recommend Luminesweeper, I'd be so so mean for skipping it. It's small, but a very competent Lumines game on the GBA. The skins it has are great and sound incredibly competent for the device it's on. It also has a minesweeper game on it, which is neat.
Ekstase is an indie game that isn't exactly Lumines, but has the same vibes. If you liked Block Challenge's arcade mode's extra piece types, you might like this. Definitely a bit more complicated, but it's really fun. It also has a rhythm game mode which is a new beast entirely.
I need to play Irides: Master Of Blocks at some point. It's not quite Lumines, opting for speed based comboing rather than a sweeper bar, but it looks just plain fantastic.
Irides is on Dreamcast. It had an iOS version that is lost media at this point, as far as I'm aware.
Luminator isn't good but it's some more skins to check out, and it's the only commercial Lumines complete knockoff I know of.
Luminator is a PC game. It had a Mac version that I can't seem to find, and a DS version that never actually released. If you can nab one of those, let me know.
Loonies 8192 (and its successor) is a nice little Lumines game, but that's underselling it. It is literally small - built to only take up 8kb - and then ported to over 20 platforms. I don't understand what it takes to do that, but I know it's worth appreciating!
Square Arcade isn't much, but honestly I'm just surprised a competent Scratch version of Lumines exists. Rather than changing speed at skin swaps, the tempo increases with each combo made.
Project Luminext is about as close to a next generation Lumines game we'll get until the next actual Lumines game. Unlike the rest of the games mentioned, this has a fancy skin builder built in that just needs images and audio files supplied. Unfortunately, so far, this game hasn't actually been released as it doesn't have a copyright safe skinset created specifically for it yet. Private builds do exist however, and they're quite good.
Please do not ask anyone for Project Luminext builds. I'm not in control of it, and the dev team trusts whoever they want to. It's not up to me!
A great philosopher once said "There are many [Lumines] games that exist, and even more that don't." I've listed most of both sides of that, however I haven't gotten everything. If you've already truly done everything listed here, you probably don't need my help finding more.
Lumines is a game series I care a bit too much about, but I really do think it's great. By this point, I hope you feel somewhere near the same way as I do. Who knows, maybe Enhance will make another one. Maybe they'll ride Tetris Effect: Connected forever when it comes to block puzzles. Honestly, I don't care either way. If you read this far and like the game now, we'll be able to keep enough community to have our own anyway.
I would like a new official game though. Enhance, if you see this, get on it.