Trash Panic

A stream of garbage is carried via a conveyor belt toward a garbage can in the middle of the screen, and the object of the game is to break down the garbage by strategically placing it into the can based on the items available before the can fills to overflowing. If three pieces of undamaged garbage fall out of the trash can, the game will end. Players may process garbage by setting fire to burnable items, some garbage will decompose when placed near the correct substances, and lighter or fragile objects (a television, for example) may be smashed by heavier ones (a bowling ball). The stream of garbage will continue to drop into the trash can until either the player successfully compacts a certain quantity of items or the trash can is filled to overflowing.

Items of garbage in the game start small, with things like pencils, pens, staplers, erasers, and other office trash. ), the trash can becomes larger to compensate, eventually coming to sit on top of Planet Earth itself. In addition to normal trash items, at the end of every level (in Main Dish difficulty) is a larger 'boss' item that must be compacted in ten seconds, otherwise resulting in penalty trash, consisting of impossible-to-break items released into the trash can to fill space more quickly. Every so often a special piece of trash, called mottainai (pronounced mo-teye-neye, meaning a sense or regret for waste in Japanese) will fall and must not be compacted (items which are assumed to have been thrown out by mistake, jewelry for example).