Tetris

The Good
(Don't worry, this won't take long)

One of the best things to come out of Soviet Russia, Tetris is a simple yet insanely addictive puzzle game. Bricks fall down from the top of the screen, and you have to shift and rotate them so they land in unbroken, horizontal lines. Every time you make a line, it gets removed and you get more playing space. You lose if the bricks pile up to the top of the screen. Tetris is a unique combination of logic, pattern-recognition, and reflexes. It's a game anyone can play and enjoy.

Tetris was and still is a cultural phenomenon. The music was originally a Russian folk song, but does anyone recognize it as that? Hell no, it's the theme from Tetris! The little electronic blips the game makes when you rotate a piece have burned themselves into my memory forever. I've had dreams about playing Tetris. What makes Tetris so special? Personally I think it's like a jigsaw puzzle, it taps into the innate "housekeeper" part in all of us that wants to turn chaos into order. Some psychologists even draw Freudian comparisons to the game, although maybe that's taking things too far.

The game's low memory and graphical requirements mean it has been ported to virtually everything with a LED screen, including calculators and wristwatches and key chains. Tetris is the most ported game in history, nothing else even comes close.

Plus you can do weird stuff like arranging the bricks so they spell your name. I suggest you try it if your PSP or DS gets stolen and you've only got a Gameboy to play with.

The Bad
Nothing. Tetris is awesome.

The Bottom Line
Playing Tetris hardly feels like playing a video game. For me at least, it feels like participating in a séance or mind-link with the pieces I'm manipulating. If you think that sounds completely stupid...well...I can't disagree. When you've played a game as many hours as I, it's OK if you're not completely objective when reviewing it.

But seriously, it's been scientifically proven that playing Tetris leads to more efficient brain activity¹. I'm sure there have been countless parents who refused to buy their kids Mario or Pacman but relented when it came to Tetris because "it's a brain game." Besides, Tetris is one of the few games a kid could conceivably get his parents hooked on.

The Good
Tetris is a popular game that came out of the Soviet Union courtesy of Alexey Pajitnov. It was released on every system you can think of, and various spin-offs were made over the years. I became familiar with it when I played the IBM PC version of the game on my cousin’s computer. Its simple, but frustrating, gameplay got me hooked. The first version for the Amiga was produced by Mirrorsoft. Another version was created by Spectrum Holobyte a year later, and this is the version I will be reviewing.

Various pieces of different shapes and colors (known as “tetrominoes”) fall down inside a box in the center of the screen. These pieces can be rotated and dropped, and your job is to make a line of squares inside the box. Do this right, and the line disappears. When you have completed ten lines, the level will advance and the pieces start to fall faster. The game ends when the box is filled with broken lines and there is no space left. Each piece is manipulated by using the middle keys on the keypad, and pressing 2 drops them. The surrounding keys change the level and let you see which piece is going to fall next. Various information – such as key assignments, information on the next piece, level number, and description – can be toggled on or off during the game.

You can play the game at any level and choose how many random blocks you want in play. The game refers to this as the “height”, and it adds to the challenge; you have to fit whatever piece you have in the gaps. Players who got the hang of the game with an empty box, even at different levels, should try playing with these random blocks. Tournaments of up to six people are available, with or without a time limit.

Well-drawn backdrops depicting Russian scenes such as the Kremlin Wall and Lenin Stadium are accompanied by short classic tunes that never grow tiring, even when you choose to have them on a continuous loop. Some tunes are familiar to me, while others were not. The high score table lists the ten recent players, and the backdrop here is a space scene similar to the one in the last level.

The Bad
Although I memorized what keys need to be pressed to manipulate the pieces, I also changed the level by accident.

The Bottom Line
Tetris is a great game that saw a release on every popular system you can think of. Manipulate the pieces you have been given in a way that you can make full lines on the bottom of the box – that’s about it, really. The graphics and sound in this version of the game are quite good, and you will play this game for many years to come.