Fortress will be one of the most unusual games available early in the GBA's life, no doubt. The game is set in the Middle Ages, complete with castles, cannons, and fantasy elements like magic.

The gameplay sounds extremely promising and totally addictive. During the "Building" phase, Tetris-style blocks fall from the style. You have to manipulate and maneuver the blocks to form your castle. Pieces will include all sorts of irregularly shaped blocks for the main part of the castle, plus special items to top it off, such as cannons, towers, and steeples. There are also magical blocks that will enhance your castle in different ways, depending on how you place them. Scoring combos during the "Building" phase will net you bonus items to make the castle even tougher and more powerful.

There is a time limit for building up your base, and then the game switches into "Battle" mode. Attacking consists of using your cannons and magic spells, and you also have small units called "Twerps". The little fellas come in several varieties for attacking, healing, repairing the fortress, etc. At this point it's unclear how you acquire Twerps...there may be some sort of resource infrastructure, or you may receive a certain number of each type, a la Lemmings. Of course, the overall goal of the "Battle" phase is to knock down your opponent's fortress while keeping yours upright.

Fortress will be one of the first non-Japanese games to feature 4-player play with only one cartridge. The nature of the game is inherently one-on-one, so you can either play a two-player match directly against a friend, or team up in pairs of two. It remains to be seen how this teaming system will work out gameplay-wise. Fortess will be playable very soon at Majesco's press event near GDC, and we'll be getting lots of new info and hands-on impressions at that time!