By Aeth Finch

Made in 1984 for the Electronika 60, Tetris became a super-popular endless puzzle creation where you try to stack blocks together to clear lines. Known for its addictive and simple gameplay, there have been multiple variations of both unofficial and official versions over the past 40 years. A few stand-outs include Tetris Effect: Connected, a beautiful version of Tetris known for its high-quality graphics and stellar music, Puyo Puyo Tetris, combining a puzzle game with SEGA’s and Puyo Puyo, Tetris 99 with its battle royale launched exclusively on Nintendo Switch. Finally, there was TETR.IO, an unofficial version made for support within browsers.

Tetris Forever is a love letter to the iconic standing of the Tetris Franchise, a game collection of over 15 classic Tetris games, with more to come in future updates. Some games in the collection like Tetris Battle Gaiden and Super Tetris 3 make their debut from formerly being exclusively available in Japan. Now, players in the Western world can indulge in these fascinting versions from decades ago.

The collection contains an in-game documentary series about the game’s life, from its creation, to the impact on the global scale, to the infamous legal fights with adaptations to other platforms. It also gives us interviews with well-known marketer Henk Rogers, someone who played a very key role in securing rights for Tetris to be released on consoles.

Tetris Forever stays true to the usual formula – with some minor tweaks. In Puyo Puyo Tetris, Tetris can fight Puyo Puyo, which are blobs where you have to match four to pop them to create chains. In Tetris 99, you and 98 other players are fighting to be the last one standing, or playing in teams to be the last team standing.

Because Tetris Forever is about the history of Tetris, the main addition that stands out is the core game mode. Uniquely, it celebrates its history. In Tetris Time Warp, you start off by playing a normal game of Tetris, with the usual rules and additional features like holding pieces, or pressing and holding down a movement button left or right. But as time goes on, “Warp Blocks” appear. 

Clearing a line with the so-called warp blocks will send you to another Tetris game. In these other versions of Tetris, you don’t get all the features you would usually have. In one version, I could not do the hard drop. In another, I could lose the ability to hold a piece. Each version of classic Tetris is different and varies from each other in how they play, showing how much the game has changed during its history.

When getting sent back to an older game, your goal is to clear specific objectives. Some could be general, like clearing two lines. Or I could make a “Big Bomb” block in Super Bombliss, clearing lines to make a satisfying explode. Sometimes, you might not play only one version, but multiple versions back to back. All this leads to a larger bonus score when completed. As the game goes on, when your main board speed increases, so does the speed for the board you get warped to. So it’s good to always stay on your toes.

Now while the collection is good and preserves classic Tetris well, not everything is perfect. One of the crucial flaws is how many games there are available. There are a massive amount of games in the history of Tetris. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for me to expect more. As of this review, the collection only has 15 games, 14 available at launch and one being added in a later update. 200 official versions have been created over the years. I hope to see this library expand massively in future updates.

There is one collection of games I want to see ported onto Tetris Forever, and it is the Tetris: The Grand Master, also known as the TGM series. To me, it feels like the definitive single-player Tetris experience. At its core, the TGM series is known for being very difficult. Its main game mode is a normal Tetris game, but it made in a way where it can become a challenge pretty quickly. With every piece you put down, the game slowly ramps up in speed. So as time goes on the game progressively gets harder. The game can be beaten however, as once the player hits a level of 998 and clears any amount of lines, they win.

There are various unique game modes within it, like 20G, which enables maximum gravity, making pieces fall instantly, and big mode, which makes all the blocks doubled in size. There is also a feature in it that I wish was in other Tetris games, IRS. IRS stands for Initial Rotation System, and it allows the player to hold a rotate button to either side before the next pieces appear on the board, and the piece that appears will automatically be rotated for the player. As stated before, with the speed of the game rapidly increasing, having a system like IRS is really useful. I wish it would be in more titles.

Additionally, with Tetris: The Grand Master 4 The Masters of Round being banned from the arcades due to issues with rights with The Tetris Company and releasing early next year, it wouldn’t be odd to expect its older variations to arrive onto the library. I personally wouldn’t recommend picking up the collection in its current state, and would like to suggest that those who want to, give the assortment of games a bit of time to flesh out.

In general, Tetris Forever is a small gift to long-time Tetris fans. With its supposedly growing library of classic games, including the exclusives arriving from Japan, the in-game documentary series, and multiplayer support, there’s something for everyone. In all, the collection is a worthy addition to celebrate the 40 years. And in the words of Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov: “Go play Tetris, my friends!” But maybe wait until there are more games available.

Intern Aeth Finch is a senior at John Dewey High School in Brooklyn.

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