Tetris Forever review for Nintendo Switch

Posted on November 11, 2024 by Nicholas Serpa in Reviews, Switch

System: Switch
Release date: November 12, 2024
Developer: Digital Eclipse
Publisher: Digital Eclipse

It’s easy to take Tetris for granted. Tetris games have been released on, apparently, over 65 different devices. Many have described it as the perfect puzzle game. Very smart scientists have even performed psychological studies about how Tetris affects the human brain. It has, incredibly, been about 40 years since the release of the very first Tetris title. To help celebrate such a monumental anniversary, the historians at developer and publisher Digital Eclipse are releasing Tetris Forever, a package that’s as much a digital museum as it is a compilation of retro Tetris games. While it’s hard to argue with the core quality of the experiences available in the package, overall I found the focus of Tetris Forever to be narrower than I had hoped – not just in terms of the history being shared, but the games themselves. It’s a good glimpse into the origins of this massive franchise, but not quite the definitive Tetris package it could have been.

Tetris Forever is the latest entry in Digital Eclipse’s Gold Master series, which attempts to help preserve some of the rich history of the video game medium by packaging it alongside the games themselves. In the case of Tetris Forever, the company has compiled just over 15 Tetris titles from the 80’s and 90’s, alongside around 90 minutes of documentary-style footage exploring the history of the series via interviews with the people who made it. There’s even documents to pore over, from original game manuals to flyers and press releases from over the years. Players can jump right into the games if they want, but the intent of this particular title is to present these Tetris classics alongside these digital exhibits, to help provide some context about how the series got its start.

I decided to review Tetris Forever not only because I love learning about the history of video games, but also because I simply love Tetris. It was one of my first video games, which I would play on my dad’s NES late into the night growing up. I’ve since had a Tetris game on just about every game system I’ve ever owned, and always seem to find the time to play it several times a year regardless of what else is going on in my life. In other words, I’m not going to try and make a case why Tetris is good. Doing so would be about as pointless as trying to explain that the sun is, indeed, very hot.

Digital Eclipse’s other recent Gold Master title, Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story, felt particularly important because of the somewhat niche nature (by modern standards) of the games it featured, and the fact that Llamasoft is a very small studio that may not be around forever. Tetris, on the other hand is… well, forever. It will very likely outlive me, and probably future generations. I would argue the history of Tetris has already been at least somewhat preserved, too – there was even a film released on Apple TV last year that told the (admittedly, over-dramatized) tale of the game’s creation. With all that in mind, I had hoped that Tetris Foreverwould dive deep into the history and throw out some knowledge bombs that would surprise me and have me wanting to learn more.

Tetris Forever certainly has stories to tell, and some of them are fascinating. An early focus of the narrative presented in the documentary portion of this package is how the game’s designer, Alexey Pajitnov, created the game. I found this portion very educational – I had no idea, for example, that it was inspired by wooden pentomino puzzles from his youth. Tetris also came about during the Cold War, and it being a Russian-developed game during that era adds an interesting element of politics to its origin story. There are some fascinating “found footage” moments included here, too. I loved seeing shots of Nintendo of America’s headquarters in the 80’s, and footage of Henk visiting the Soviet Union to strike a deal under the radar; these segments were great because I knew I was watching unearthed footage that I otherwise never would have seen. It’s wonderful that we get to hear these stories directly from the primary individuals who helped make Tetris happen, and it certainly helps that the “main characters” so to speak are genuinely charming to listen to, especially when they start recounting personal anecdotes about one another.

That being said, I think Tetris Forever will be most interesting to those who really want a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes of what the game industry was like in the eighties and nineties. The bulk of the focus of the documentary clips is on the messy issue of the game’s copyright, and how Henk Rogers crossed paths with Alexey and ultimately formed The Tetris Company. This is important Tetris history, so much so that I’d estimate over half of the film clips focus on it. Of course, the flipside of this is that it’s also just a lot of clips of people talking about deals that didn’t happen, or almost happened, or about that time they met with publisher X or publisher Y. To be reductive – it’s a lot of people talking about going to meetings, essentially.

Make no mistake – I’m not saying “the history isn’tdramatic enough” or anything like that. History simply is what it is – it can’t really be “bad” unless its inaccurate. Frankly, I love these types of insights into how the games industry operated decades ago, when even the big companies were still figuring out things like licensing. But I think for most people, there will be a point where a lot of the information being presented may start to muddle together, and not necessarily sustain their interest. Overall, this is a fairly straightforward retelling of how these two people ended up with the rights to Tetris as opposed to someone else. Whether or not that will be interesting to you, personally, is something you’ll have to decide for yourself.

Unfortunately, pretty much everything outside of that history is merely glossed over. This makes sense to some extent, because while its true that many Tetris games have unique ideas driving them or new gameplay twists, at a certain point there were just so many of them being released because of the sheer scale of the brand – and because The Tetris Company, of course, wanted to keep making money. The trajectory of this company is different than that of a small outfit like Llamasoft, where almost every game Minter worked on was a passion project with some level of creative or financial risk involved. So, whereas Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story felt like a more complete history of the company during it heyday – it also had nearly 40 games – the ones selected for Tetris Forever feel like they were selected based primarily on what they could easily get the rights to. And if your favorite Tetris experience isn’t one of the playable games featured in this collection, you likely won’t learn much about its development, either.

That’s not to say that there aren’t some excellent and important games included here – this is Tetris, after all. A highlight for me was the original Tetris for the Electronika 60 being recreated as faithfully as possible – before these games even had any music in them – which I appreciated, admittedly if only for the historic value. Then you get Hatris, which I had never even heard of before playing this collection, and which quickly became very addictive for me and one of my favorite titles in the collection. Tetris Battle Gaidenfor the Super Famicom is also an exciting inclusion, because this one was never localized for western audiences, and saw the series experimenting with including cartoon characters and powerups in a big way – it’s a blast to play. Super Tetris 3 is simply an excellent, polished Tetris game across the board, with several modes to enjoy, including substantial multiplayer functionality. Interestingly, there’s even a non-Tetris title include, a Japan-only version of Go that was released for the Famicom – and while it seems out of place at first, it’s included because it played a vital role in Henk Rogers’ career as a game developer. Sprinkled between those oddball releases are some relatively standard Tetris releases that feature the Bombliss mode, which we’ve seen pop up in many Tetris games over the years,.

I think my biggest gripe with Tetris Forever’s 18 game library is that a lot of the inclusions here feel like padding. For reference, here is the list of 18 games included:

Tetris (Electronika 60 | 1984)
Tetris (MS-DOS | 1986)
Igo: Kyu Roban Taikyoku (Famicom | 1987)
Tetris (MS-DOS | 1988)
Tetris (Apple II | 1988)
Tetris (Famicom |1988)
Hatris (Famicom | 1990)
Hatris (Game Boy | 1991)
Tetris 2 + Bombliss (Famicom, 1991)
Hatris (NES, 1992)
Super Tetris 2 + Bombliss (Super Famicom, 1992)
Tetris Battle Gaiden (1993, Super Famicom)
Super Tetris 2 + Bombliss genteiban (Super Famicom, 1994)
Super Tetris 3 (1994, Super Famicom)
Super Bombliss (Game Boy, 1995)
Super Bombliss (Super Famicom, 1995)
Super Bombliss DX (game Boy Color, 1999)
Tetris Time Warp (New)

Looking at this list, we have no less than three versions of Hatris, and three versions of Super Bombliss. While on different platforms, these alternate versions generally only have minor gameplay differences, and mostly represent improvements on the older versions. Super Tetris 2 + Bombliss Genteiban is almost exactly the same game as Super Tetris 2 + Bombliss, with the only substantial difference being some different Bombliss puzzles. And the early Tetris games, while all of course very historically significant, are also very similar from a playability perspective. Some of the titles included you will likely not want to play for more than a few minutes: The Apple II version of Tetris is painfully clunky to play, due to the distorted visuals that are inextricable from that platform. So, from my perspective, this compilation really includes more like seven truly unique Tetris games – the rest of the package is mostly different variants of the same thing. That’s if you don’t include the new addition, Tetris Time Warp, or that Go game I mentioned earlier (which I also didn’t really care to get invested in, as it remains untranslated and is not why I picked up the package.)

I just can’t really say with confidence that there’s enough variety or quantity in this package to really make Tetris Forever the definitive Tetris compilation. We hear about certain oddball games like Welltris and Facetris, but we can’t play them. None of the Tetris games for the N64 or Dreamcast are here, and some of those were quite unique. While certain Tetris: The Grand Mastergames have been made more accessible over the years, they are not playable either and are barely mentioned. I know it’s a pipe dream, but I personally would have loved to see them rework Tetris DS for this collection, putting the DS’ screens side by side and helping to preserve one of the best Tetris games ever made.

I certainly didn’t expect every Tetris game to be included, or even most of them. And I understand that copyright is messy, particularly for this series, and certainly when you have companies like Nintendo, SEGA and EA all making their own versions across the last forty years. But if the mission was to provide an playable history of the series, that vision is not fully realized here. (As a side note, there also isn’t as much variety in the supporting documentation as we saw in Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story – lots of game advertisements and box art, but little beyond that.)

Now, I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about Tetris Time Warp, which is a great addition. It essentially plays like normal Tetris, but after clearing a certain number of lines, the game’s visuals and mechanics shift back in time to that of one of the other games in the collection. Once this happens, the player has a limited amount of time to complete an objective, like clearing several lines at once or blowing up a mega bomb in Bombliss. Doing so will increase your score in the main mode. Its a lot of fun in short bursts, and i enjoyed the challenge of having to familiarize myself with the constantly changing game feel, and the pressure of having a time limit to do so. I wouldn’t recommend picking up Tetris Forever to play this mode on its own, but it’s a good time and I could see myself returning to it occasionally.

The Verdict

As an interactive documentary, Tetris Forever is an overall solid package, but it’s far from the definitive Tetris compilation that it could have been. While I found elements of the series’ history very interesting to me personally – particularly some of the early found footage clips, the fact that everything after the 90’s is only briefly discussed results in a story that feels decidedly incomplete. Playing the games included in the collection is as fun as round of Tetris normally is – the emulation of the selected games is fundamentally solid. The new experience included in this package, Tetris Time Warp, is challenging and a fun celebration of the series’ legacy. But a disappointingly narrow selection of games, which in this case are often ports of each other with extremely minor differences, result in a package that lacks the substance and variety it needed.

Tetris Forever copy provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.