Bejeweled (series)


Bejeweled is a series of tile-matching puzzle video games created by PopCap Games. Bejeweled was released initially for browsers in 2001, followed by five sequels: Bejeweled 2, Bejeweled Twist, Bejeweled Blitz, Bejeweled 3, and Bejeweled Stars, 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. By February 2010, Bejeweled sales hit 50 million. The figure includes the original game, plus the Blitz and Twist versions. An arcade version was released in Q3 2013.

Games

;Main series
;Spin-offs
Bejeweled was initially created by PopCap Games as a web-based Flash game named Diamond Mine. PopCap created partnerships with established Internet gaming sites, such as Microsoft Zone, to host Bejeweled as well. The name Bejeweled was suggested by Microsoft, who thought the original name Diamond Mine was too similar to that of an existing game, Diamond Mines.
The game has been ported to other platforms, including Microsoft Windows, where it was called Bejeweled Deluxe. Astraware produced versions for PDAs on the BlackBerry, iPhone, Palm and Windows Mobile smartphone platforms. They also released Bejeweled Deluxe on the Xbox as a downloadable Xbox Live Arcade game. On September 12, 2006, it was released as one of the first games downloadable from the iTunes Store for the iPod.
PopCap Games initially announced a version of Bejeweled for the iPhone that was not a standalone game, but rather a web application playable over the Safari browser. A native application for the iPhone has since been made available for purchase in the iTunes store, although the web-based version still exists.
By 2013, PopCap estimates that over 10 billion hours of the game had been played on over 500 million downloaded copies.

Influence

Bejeweled was influenced by the game Shariki, written in 1988 by Russian developer Eugene Alemzhin, which had nearly identical gameplay.
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.