Brick by brick – Tetris (1989) has been cleared!

I used to be a little obsessed with the Game Boy version of Tetris. It was one of the only video games I bothered to play as a teenager, as I was going through an obnoxious phase where I thought that video games were for dorks and refused to play any of them for the sake of my street cred. I weren’t no dork (apparently – this is retroactively debatable), so with a few exceptions, my gaming life screeched to a halt until I hit my 20’s. I wouldn’t play much of anything during that oh-so awkward time of life…but I still managed to sneak in some NES here and there. Adolescence was when I played through all of the Mega Man titles in full for the first time, as well as finally slaying the childhood white whale that was Dragon Warrior. Emulation opened a lot of new doors for me at that time – it was also how I incessantly played the aforementioned Game Boy Tetris. As it was one of the only video games I would look at, I ended up getting okay at it.

Now that we’ve taken a slightly embarrassing peek into my past, we can fast forward back to today. After months of sporadically putting in half-hearted attempts to clear it, I finally managed to beat Type B, Round 9-5 of Nintendo’s Tetris for the NES. This is generally considered the closest thing to an ending the game has. I must’ve had a real hankering for some falling blocks, because once I had done that, I went on to play a few rounds of Tengen’s Tetris at length. I’d never given that version a fair shake before, but wow. It’s such a better game when stacked up (ha ha) against the Nintendo version that it’s staggering, honestly. Nintendo’s Tetris has infinitely better presentation, but the speed and overall feel of Tengen’s is so much more satisfying to play. If only there was a way to marry the two versions into one definitive experience for the NES…oh well. That’s the way the blocks fall sometimes.

Anyway, I didn’t think a full-blown review was necessary for Tetris, since everyone on the face of the Earth has played it before. It’s great fun, and something I’ll always enjoy. Just about any version you can get is guaranteed to be addicting…except the Famicom one, which I also sampled on my Tetris-related travels. That one is almost as wack as a teenager’s unwarranted opinion.