Sure, we've all played Bejeweled and it is amazing. The Match 3 mechanic is fantastic and you always want to continue going for that high score no matter what. Get those three jewels into a row and then continue to set up for combos and get that high score. While it's definitely a blast, Bejeweled itself can get rather old after a certain point. The best way to keep the mechanic fresh is to make a new twist on an old favorite. These games take what's great about the Match 3 that Bejeweled turned into a phenomenon and turn it over on its head, creating new challenges, new possibilities for combos and a whole lot of fun.

Puzzle Quest: Challenges of the Warlords (DS, Wii, 360, PC) and Puzzle Quest: Galactrix (DS, 360)

One of the first and most acclaimed games to take the Match 3 mechanic and add to it was the Puzzle Quest series. A game that uses Bejeweled as a battle system for a role-playing game, players take on the role of an adventurer in a medieval kingdom or the captain of a spaceship to defeat enemies and eradicate the threat to the kingdom or galaxy, respectively. Players and their opponents take turns making moves on the same board with penalties involved for gems that are not matched correctly. Different colored gems mean different things in these games. In the Puzzle Quest series, red, blue, yellow and green gems all allow you to gain points to use special attacks, while skulls can be destroyed to inflict damage on your opponent and purple gems get you more experience points. By turning the gems into a game in and of itself, the series distinguishes itself in a very unique way. Players are forced to customize their character skewed to a specific color of abilities, making the gems of a certain color on the board all the more desirable to combo off of.

Poker Smash (Xbox 360 Arcade)

Poker Smash combines the hands of Poker with the Match 3 mechanic. In Poker Smash, there is a row of five tiles that rises as the timer goes on. Each tile has one of the four card suits on it as well as a letter denoting it as a 10, Jack, Queen, King or Ace. Shifting around the tiles in a row, players must match three of the same kind of card, five of the same suit, or a straight to the Ace. As you gain points and create combos, you can earn bombs to place wherever you like on the board, effectively destroying a tile. The game also gives you challenges to complete, such as three of a kind in tens or a straight flush, to get extra points. The game comes complete with a leaderboard and puzzles for players to undergo.

Bejeweled: Twist (PC)

Bejeweled: Twist is a variant on Bejeweled from PopCap. While the concept is the same, Match 3, the execution is incredibly different. Players navigate the board using a circle that encompasses four gems. A click of the mouse will shift those gems one square clockwise, forcing players to rethink their spatial advantages on the board. While this may seem like a trivial difference, it actually does completely change how the game is played and how players approach setting up combos and matching up to five gems in a row.

The Twist mechanic for Match 3 was expanded upon in Gyromancer, an offering from PopCap and Japanese RPG behemoth Square-Enix, where Bejeweled: Twist was used to great effect as a Puzzle Quest-like battle system with the classic writing, story and character work of a Square-Enix RPG. In Gyromancer, players can get items to change the direction of the shift of gems from clockwise to counterclockwise, continuing to further the depth of the experience.

Lose Your Marbles (PC)

I lost more hours of my life to this game than I would care to recount. Originally published in 1997, Lose Your Marbles was a game by Sega for the PC that involved two five-rows long grids, one of which was controlled by you, the other by your opponent. The whole point of this game was to match as many marbles as possible in the center grid - a minimum of three and a maximum of five. When you matched the marbles or set off a combo, more marbles would be sent to your opponent's grid. When your opponent's grid was filled to capacity, your opponent would lose. It seemed simple, but much like Bejeweled, which would follow years later, Lose Your Marbles had special marbles that would only come into play after a certain point that would completely mess up your opponent. Matching the same marbles over and over again would net you a multiplier that would increase the number of marbles sent to your opponent's grid. The single player campaign was fantastic, with a number of different environments including asphalt, grass, sand and the sky. The backdrops were easy on the eyes without being distracting and overall managed to keep to the flavor of playing with marbles. Back in 1997, the only way to play with another human opponent was over a linked network, so the AI had to be top-notch. Facing other players was a lot of fun and it's something that Bejeweled is sorely lacking - a competitive format.