Tetris

The CoCo version of Tetris is one of many conversions of the famous block-stacking game. The goal is to place pieces made up of four tiles in a ten-by-twenty well, organizing them into complete rows, which then disappear. As rows are cleared, the pace of the game increases, and the game ends if the stack reaches the top of the well.

Options of the CoCo version include the selection of starting level (between 0 and 9) and a handicap setting, allowing to pre-fill the well with blocks in seven different levels. The playing level can be increased at any time and a preview of the next piece to appear can be toggled on and off. Scoring works similarly to the original PC version of the game as written by Vadim Gerasimov: there are more points the higher a piece is dropped, a bonus for not displaying the next piece and a bonus for playing in higher levels/difficulties. No points are given for clearing rows and there is no high score table.

Implemented as a 'fat binary', the game offers a higher resolution mode on a CoCo 3. Besides displaying more of the Saint Basil's Cathedral-inspired background graphic, the CoCo 3 version allows to optionally display a keyboard command overview, the current level and a pieces statistic.