50 Years of Video Games: Tetris (Game Boy)

Tetris wasn’t first released in 1989, but its release on the Game Boy that year might have ended up being the most important version of the game. Funnily enough, that release might not be as important for Tetris as it was for Nintendo’s handheld system. Companies around the world were clamoring to bring the block-dropping puzzle game to countries outside of the Soviet Union after Alexey Pajitnov’s game proved to be a hit with most everyone who played it, so it would likely still be a legendary game even if it hadn’t caught fire on the Game Boy. The Game Boy wasn’t the most powerful handheld system available at the time, but it managed to beat out competitors like the Atari Lynx and later the Game Gear because of its library, with Tetris being a headliner as an excellent fit for a game to play on the go. The quick yet addictive puzzle action it featured gelled well with a system you would only play in short bursts, and Tetris practically lead to the truism that handheld games were better off designing their play around the idea the system might have to be turned off at any time. The Game Boy might have possibly thrived without Tetris as well, but the game’s inclusion in the North American and European launch library helped the system hit the ground running big time.

During a game of Tetris, blocks will drop into a play field that is ten squares wide and eighteen squares tall, the player trying to clear away the blocks by completely filling a row with ten squares. After that row is cleared, the rows above it will move down one layer, ignoring gravity so that pieces can potentially float above empty spaces below them. The pieces that are dropped down into this well of sorts are called tetrominos, each of them composed of four connected squares arranged in seven distinct shapes that heavily influence how they can be placed. For example, while the 2×2 square tetromino is easy to plop into a space, the two zigzag shapes, sometimes called S and Z for their resemblance to the letters, can be harder to slot in since they don’t stack as evenly as others. A long line of four blocks though is a perfect way of clearing many rows at once, and a fairly successful tactic is to try and leave one column empty until you’re delivered the long piece so you can drop it in and clear four rows at once in what is known as a Tetris. However, those S and Z pieces can make it hard to build a nice even set of rows, but pieces like the T-shaped block, the L block, and its mirrored J variant can provide some flexible pieces that won’t leave too many open spots so long as you plan around their more cooperative shapes.

With just these seven block types there is already a fair bit of strategy at play, and unlike in some later Tetris variations, the moment a piece makes contact with the existing pile it will lock in fairly quickly. A sloppy placement can necessitate a complete shift in tactics as the automatically dropping blocks now need to be guided to new paths to clear away the accidental obstruction, and if you overcommit to a design that tries to make tidy rows than the more peculiar pieces can be left with few places to slot in. The visual information is all very clear, the different pieces even having unique designs to try and help you identify them at a glance as the game speeds up the longer you play. Tetris is the kind of puzzle game you can start to play on reflex once the rules have become familiar enough to you, and as long as the piled pieces never rise above the top row, you can continue playing the game’s A-Type mode as long as you are able. The goal is to get a high score ultimately, more matches done at once providing a bigger point boost, but the survival angle and accessibility make it easier to slip into than something like a points-based platformer that occupies a more objective-focused genre. This block dropping marathon can have its starting speed set in A-Type if you want to dive into the more challenging levels immediately, although normally it increases in speed every 10 lines cleared and starting immediately from something like level 5 will mean it won’t increase until you reach 60 lines cleared instead as a bit of an odd programming quirk.

The play field in Tetris is a smart size for keeping the player’s options limited. You can rotate every block clockwise or counterclockwise as it drops in, you can hold down to speed up its descent for faster placement, and you always have a little window to preview which piece is coming next, it always guaranteed to be different than the one you’re currently dropping. You are given enough to work with that you feel like you can reasonably guide the pieces around even at higher speed levels but the tetromino delivery is meant to throw you occasional curveballs so no one tactic will serve as a permanent solution. Endurance and a degree of adaptability become key to going far and so the high scores you earn end up being a satisfying display of how you were able to manage this small but challenging puzzle concept.

A-Type’s endless challenge is certainly enjoyable for a quick pick up and play experience, but there is a bit more to this cartridge even if the marathon run is the best remembered. B-Type takes on the form of a challenge to clear 25 lines from the Tetris playfield, the game scattering blocks around before you’ve even begun placing them to make it more difficult. Your difficulty levels range from 0 to 5 with each one placing blocks in a number of rows equal to double the difficulty, so 0 will be a clear playfield you will end up making yourself while level 5 has a group of haphazardly placed squares you’ll have to work with. You can also crank the speed levels up here as well to make the process more difficult, and it does feel like the mode needs these speed options to be more difficult since otherwise it’s not too hard to slip into the same line clearing tactics that would work whether or not the well was already somewhat filled. These options do lead to Tetris having a set of different “endings” of sorts, such as a different number of Russian characters dancing based on which difficult level you pick for speed 9 play and one of of two different rockets launching into space if you can hit a 10,000 or 20,000 point score threshold while clearing the required lines. Interestingly enough both A-Type and B-Type contain even harder modes despite these sort of conclusions for completing the nominally hardest challenge, holding down and start on the title screen unlocking heart difficulties to speed things up even further. These can instead swing to being perhaps too ridiculously fast, but it is an interesting little secret for those looking to squeeze some more value out of the simple game.

A 2-player mode actually allows for further longevity though, two players able to compete to try and eliminate the other player or clear 30 lines to win. If you are able to clear two rows or more at once, you’ll send over a line of blocks to the bottom of the other player’s well which consists of an almost complete row save for a random open spot. Usually this won’t line up with any open areas they’re trying to cultivate to serve as a nice complication to their work, but compared to something like Puyo Puyo it doesn’t feel like active attacks will get you much more ground than simply going for big clears already and just happening to send garbage over in the process. Having garbage yourself does add some tension to the action though, but the win condition and mild interaction between both players means this isn’t too big of an attraction compared to block droppers where competition is a key part of the design. One odd touch though is that the two players are assigned characters to represent them, Nintendo’s famous plumbers Mario and Luigi standing in as character avatars seemingly just so when the round is over you can see one of them sad to have lost and the other gleeful in victory.

Aesthetics, funnily enough, are still strong in Tetris even if most of the time you’ll be staring at the falling blocks. This is because a light dash of Russian influence has been sprinkled over it, the exoticism of a game from behind the Iron Curtain played up in small but noticeable ways. Beyond the earlier mentioned dancing Russian men celebrating your victory and the specific space shuttle being the Buran spaceplane, the opening screen shows the Kremlin and, perhaps most iconically, there is a very catchy Russian folk song available as one of the three music options. The Tetris theme known simply as “A-Type” is arrangement of Korobeiniki, a song originally about a pair of peddlers haggling flirtatiously but one that was boiled down into a toe-tapping 8-bit tune with a strong rhythm and some rise and falls so that it’s looping isn’t incessant but it matches that constant need to keep paying attention and keep active. “B-Type” is an original composition that has a more consistent energy to it which feels more fitting when the speed is high, while “C-Type” is actually a Bach piece, French Suite No. 3’s classical sound feeling like the more relaxing and cerebral option. Even though this is a block-dropping game with few frills in the gameplay, the little extra touches of identity and a surprisingly strong selection of puzzle game musical accompaniment still gives the game a bit of identity even though it would go on to be remade and reimagined in many forms afterwards. After all, it is a bit telling that Korobeiniki is better known now as “The Tetris Song” and has recurred in future releases simply because it was such a standout choice in this popular release.

THE VERDICT: An appealing block-dropping puzzler, Tetris leverages its approachable simplicity into something that almost anyone can be hooked by. The pieces are complicated just that tiny bit required to make it so you do have to break from the optimal strategies from time to time even though building up to a Tetris or clearing as often as you can are still surprisingly solid approaches, but B-Type’s complications with blocks already in the play field can add some variety if the main mode becomes too easy. Being able to start from different difficulties can let you skip ahead too so slow starts aren’t necessary once you’ve figured the game out, but the multiplayer does feel a touch like a passive competition rather than direct attacking. With some phenomenally catchy music choices that match the action well in different ways though, Tetris for Game Boy may not have too much to it, but it comes together into a lovely little time-waster that holds its freshness surprisingly well.

And so, I give Tetris for Game Boy…

A GOOD rating. Perhaps present knowledge and comparison points means I know what Tetris is missing better than people of the time did, but since the Tetris Company started to standardize their game rules we’ve had the introduction of small but impactful options like the ability to hold onto one piece and swap it in for a bit more strategy or more room to rotate a piece once it has touched others. Continuing play in Tetris is the goal of the A-Type mode but you are limited by the rules somewhat and so slipping into familiar tactics to survive can homogenize your approach somewhat, but that doesn’t mean that Game Boy Tetris was lacking in challenge at least. We’ve seen so many iterations since that can handle multiplayer better or add extra modes and variations that it feels like there’s a Tetris game that better covers every aspect of this version better, albeit not always in the same game. If video games had their own version of Chess though, this might be it: a game that many can understand and enjoy and one with room for thought and special play, but it must be somewhat humble to maintain that appeal. Tetris for Game Boy doesn’t have the bells and whistles that could make it more captivating, but it has an engaging groundwork that makes it easy to play in small bursts without ever truly wearing out its welcome. It is dependably enjoyable but if you want to dig deeper into a puzzle game you’ll probably want to go with something that can stoke your mind more, challenge your reflexes harder, or offer a bit more room for strategy.

Tetris for Game Boy doesn’t really fail anywhere, even the multiplayer more mildly decent than truly flawed in concept, but it captured such a simple yet enjoyable idea in its four block pieces and line-clearing formula. In some ways it is because you can hang in there so well that it keeps you on board, continued survival always seeming feasible up until you’re too close to the top of the screen to really play anymore. Ideas like the B-Type mode are good way of adding a small spin to the action, but Tetris for Game Boy’s biggest success is being in the right place at the right time. While its descendants have other areas to point to as their improvements or major appeals, this was an inviting and involved video game on the go, a combination so powerful this game’s legacy outstrips many of the refinements and rereleases seen elsewhere. Whipping out Tetris on Game Boy now would likely be an act born out of nostalgia rather than an attempt to truly experience the Tetris formula, and quite wisely it has been available on plenty of handheld systems since to keep tapping this rich vein, but the appeal of Tetris even in this very simple presentation of the format still shines through even if you choose to view it through the dim green of the original dot-matrix Game Boy screen.