The series has sold over 10 million copies, including the Madō Monogatari games.

Puyo are round, slime-like creatures that, in most variations of the game, fall from the top of the screen in groups of two, three, and four.

Garbage Puyo are cached above the opponent's playing field, and do not fall until the attacker's chain concludes, and then the defender puts down a piece.

Garbage Puyo block the opponents' playing fields, and can cause them to lose if one is placed the third spot from the left in the top row.

[1] The first Puyo Puyo game was developed by Compile and released in 1991 for the MSX2 and Family Computer Disk System; the latter release was published by Tokuma Shoten as a pack-in for their Famimaga magazine.

[2] Unlike the previous release, the game focuses on competitive play; the single-player mode consists of a gauntlet consisting of either 3, 10, or 13 computer opponents, while the multiplayer mode allows two human players to battle each other.

The game was ported to several major platforms in Japan, with the Mega Drive becoming a bestseller.

[4] Puyo Puyo 2 adds the ability to counter the opponent's chains; additionally, it changes the single-player gauntlet from a linear structure to a roulette-based structure that requires the player to pass certain score thresholds to advance.

[1] Compile released a variety of spin-off titles on home consoles, handhelds, and through their Disc Station disk magazine.

[7] Sega released Puyo Pop Fever on November 26, 2003, for their NAOMI arcade hardware.

The game features a mostly new set of characters, alongside new gameplay mechanics such as Fever Mode.

Like its arcade predecessors, Fever was ported to many platforms; the Dreamcast version notably serves as Sega's final first party video game.

Instead of directly translating the Mega Drive version of the 1992 arcade game, Sega decided to replace the Madou Monogatari cast with villains from the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog animated television series.

[citation needed] After the Game Boy Advance Puyo Pop, Puyo Pop Fever saw a worldwide release, with North America receiving the GameCube and Nintendo DS versions and Europe receiving it on the majority of platforms it came out on.

[18] 2003's Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg features an unlockable Puyo Pop minigame, which requires the use of the GameCube – Game Boy Advance link cable to download the minigame to a Game Boy Advance.

Director Christian Whitehead considered it the most "complex" boss fight for them to develop.

Yonemitsu felt that the puzzle games at the time had "weak" characters and thus decided to create a puzzle game using characters from Compile's Madou Monogatari RPG series.

The success of Street Fighter II influenced Puyo Puyo's focus on competitive gameplay, with Yonemitsu trying out many mechanics in an attempt to recapture the fighting game's competitive nature.

Sega Sammy reported in 2022 that the sum of games sold, downloads of free-to-play titles, registered IDs totaled 37.7 million.