YES, TETRIS

What is... tetris?

Well, to start with, tetris is one of our favorite games. It's also one of the best selling games of all time (considering the entire series.) It was created by Alexey Pajitnov at blah blah blah blah, look you already know the history of Tetris because you watched the Gaming Historian video we recommended in the WildSnake review. If not, go watch that.

OK so about Tetris, there are a lot of games called Tetris for the Game Boy, and not all of them are even Tetris! For the sake of simplicity we will be reviewing Tetris as a monolith, and using this post as a way to justify that.

So, what is Tetris? Tetris, for the sake of this column is 1989 Tetris, Tetris DX, and that's it. What isn't Tetris is Tetris 2, Tetris Plus, Tetris Attack, Tetris Blast (AKA Bombliss as first seen in Tetris 2 + Bombliss, no relation to Tetris 2,) Wordtris, Hattris, or ModRetro's Tetris. These games are NOT Tetris, except for the ModRetro port which one supposes should be mentioned.

Yes, in 2024 ModRetro released a Gameboy copy called the Chromatic, and it did come with a new, officially licensed version of Tetris. We have played it, and it's the best version of Tetris we've played. Our usual go-to for Tetris Guideline era is Tetris Axis on the 3DS, but Chromatic may beat it out. you can switch between an engine similar to the original Gameboy's version or TG engine, adjust lots of settings, profiles, game modes like Sprint and Fever. Two issues: One, you have to buy the Chromatic to get a copy (without piracy, ofc) and two it's only sort of compatible with a real Gameboy. Nerdly Pleasures did a good writeup on this, something about the cartridges higher total memory and power draw make it incompatible with our stock GBP.

So, that leaves Tetris and Tetris DX. Yeah, no, it's obviously DX. 1989 Tetris has heaps of nostalgia for us being a game we had on the 3DS, but the Four-O surprise and a lack of high score saving makes it far worse than DX. DX also has more modes and color and heaps of refinements that nine years will give you.

The truth is that we do not know enough (yet) to delve deep into Tetris systems and how they work (we'll do a big write-up one day,) so the rest of this post is 'how good of a game is Tetris (disambiguation)?' It's the best game we've played so far, that's for sure.

It's Tetris. What were you expecting us to say? Tetris is incredibly addicting, easy to pick up, takes thousands of hours and heaps of finesse to perfect, and fun! Tetris is the pinnacle of falling block puzzle games for us. Even original GB Tetris trumps anything else on the tier list, and we reckon it will for a very long time. That's the purpose of this segment, to find something we may enjoy more than Tetris, or leave the king at the top of the throne.

Tetris is one of those peak games that feels more like a crossword or a craft, there's an elegance to movement and piece positioning and planning, a reflexive part of the brain next to the Rubikcubal lobe, the T-spin gland. Our brain is gonna look strange by the end of this. Go play Tetris! And who knows, maybe tetris Plus or Hattris will be better.

Ha! Ahhahaha!!! Stars, no, not Tetris Plus. That one sucks.

Here's the link to that Nerdly Pleasure article!