Published , by Will Borger
Published , by Will Borger
Everybody’s played Tetris. Me, I got my start with the Game Boy version a cousin gave me. No case, no instructions, just the cartridge. But I knew what to do because Tetris is eternal. It’s hard to believe that it hasn’t been around forever, that we didn’t simply will it into existence, a collective idea made real, given form.
That, of course, isn’t how video games work. They’re made by people, and in the case of something like Tetris, that means a lot of games, a lot of people, and a lot of history. Tetris Forever is trying to catalog that history. It’s not meant to be a single, all-encompassing, one-stop shop for all things Tetris. There are too many licenses to manage for that. Instead, like other entries in Digital Eclipse's Gold Master series (see: Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story for an earlier entry from this very year), Tetris Forever wants to be part documentary, part game collection, and part historical artifact.
That means archival materials, interviews, and a whole lot more. In the brief time I spent browsing the material Digital Eclipse has put together, I was very impressed. I am not a Tetris-head. I’m decent at best, and while I’ve spent a solid chunk of time with a few versions of Tetris over the years, I don’t know a lot of the franchise’s history. But reading through all this, I was pretty eager to learn more.
In addition to being a trip through history, Tetris Forever is also set up to be a vital piece of game preservation. In addition to all the neat material that Digital Eclipse has compiled, there are also fifteen games here, several of which have never been released outside of Japan. Digital Eclipse has even gone out of its way to recreate the Game Boy version of Tetris, complete with an expanded version of the theme, which, if you’re familiar, is a banger. I pulled it up on YouTube while writing this, and I felt like that food critic in Ratatouille after a bite of Remy’s ratatouille, which is to say, I went back in time. So that’s cool.
At the suggestion of lead designer Jason Cirillo, I spent some time with Super Bombliss, and adored it. In Super Bombliss, some of the blocks have bombs in them, and positioning them well can lead to massive explosions. It’s a neat twist on classic Tetris gameplay, and a ton of fun. And Tetris Forever is full of cool, often overlooked games like this, each with its own little mechanics.
But the real standout here might be Tetris Time Warp, a completely new take on Tetris designed by Cirillo and developed by Digital Eclipse for Tetris Forever. Time Warp plays like modern Tetris, with one big twist. Every time you clear ten lines, you’ll get a time warp tetromino, which cycles through several different looks, each representing a different era of Tetris, until you place it. Once you clear a line with a time warp piece in it, you’ll go back in time to a different era of Tetris, and face a special challenge (such as clearing four lines) that you’ll have to complete in twenty seconds.
The eras each have their own different look, feel, and mechanics. The Electronica 60 version from 1984, for example, doesn’t have soft drops. The handheld version from 1989 does, but it doesn’t have hard drops. And then there’s the 1993 version, a variant of Bombliss, which requires you to clear a line with a big, two by two bomb. Clearing lines won’t get you anywhere. It’s essentially a different game, but it’s super fun to play Time Warp because you get a feel for several different eras of Tetris at once, you learn to use the different mechanics, and clearing the challenges will make you a better Tetris player. I’m not great at Tetris, but I loved Tetris Time Warp, and every time I went back in time, I got a little better.
Better still, the time warp mechanic operates in multiplayer, too. If you go back in time, you can’t get back to the modern-day until you finish that era’s challenge, which will prevent you from attacking other players. I didn’t get a chance to play Time Warp in multiplayer, but I’m very excited to try it.
I didn't know what to expect with Tetris Forever, but I came away from my time with it excited about playing (and learning more about) Tetris, and I hope Digital Eclipse will be able to bring other versions of Tetris to it in the future. In the meantime, I should probably fire up that Game Boy copy of Tetris. I’ve got some practicing to do.
This preview is based on a behind-closed-doors demo shown by the developer at New York Comic Con.