Tetris Forever – Fun but Not the Nostalgia You’re Looking For

For 40 years, people have been dropping alternately shaped blocks down a column and clearing them out one to four lines at a time. Tetris has been one of THE biggest staples in gaming history that is still going strong four decades later. To celebrate this monumental milestone, a collection of 15 games was assembled and Tetris Forever was born! As a fan of Tetris for most of those four decades, I have to ask… does this collection do the series justice?

Title: Tetris Forever
Platform: Steam (Reviewed), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One/Series S|X
Developer: Digital Eclipse, Blue Planet Software, Tose, Spike Chunsoft
Publisher: Digital Eclipse
Release Date: November 12, 2024

More Than Just a Game

It is made abundantly clear from the outset that they want you to learn about the history of Tetris. When you open up the game, there are no games to be found on the home screen. Instead, there are several timelines that you can traverse complete with factoids, videos, and other interesting information that details and paints a vivid picture of the game based around dropping Tetriminos and achieving victory!

You can browse each of the five different timelines at your leisure with each one having a progress indicator to let you know how much of that timeline you’ve explored. It goes into detail about how the game was created, how and when it was unveiled to the world, its rise in popularity, and then some. The painstaking detail of this feature alone is incredible and filled with a lot of insight to make you appreciate the history of the series even more!

While I understand that the developers are proud of the history of Tetris (and why wouldn’t they be as it is the most-ported game of all-time that has a combined 520 MILLION copies in circulation), I didn’t like the fact that the meat and potatoes of this collection weren’t made apparent from the onset which is… the games.

With the nice colorful bars taking you to the different timelines front and center, an average user would be drawn there to pick the games they want to play; however, you would have to unintuitively look to the upper-right portion of the screen to find the menu option that will take you to the games themselves. A better menu structure should have been the goal here as a lot of people want to just jump in and play the games. The history should be the bonus of the collection, not the main attraction.

40 Years of Dropping Blocks

Now that we’ve found the games, it’s time to dive in and relive all of the great memories of playing Tetris on the NES, the Game Boy, the Nintendo 64, and even modern consoles like the PlayStation 4, right?

Well… no. Not exactly.

This is where the collection is a double-edged sword because the collection of games selected are a bunch of rare international titles that will allow players to experience Tetris in ways they haven’t before but, at the same time, also kills the nostalgia factor of digging in and playing the games we grew up with.

On the bright side, there are 15 of these rare titles and one brand-new game that is making its world premiere in this collection! So, what are the games that you get to play?

Tetris – Electronika 60
Tetris – MS-DOS
Igo: Kyuu Roban Taiyoku – Famicom
Tetris – MS-DOS
Tetris – Apple II
Tetris – Famicom
Hatris – Famicom
Hatris – Game Boy
Tetris 2 + Bombliss – Famicom
Hatris – NES
Super Tetris 2 + Bombliss – Super Famicom
Tetris Battle Gaiden – Super Famicom
Super Tetris 2 + Bombliss Genteiban – Super Famicom
Super Tetris 3 – Super Famicom
Super Bombliss – Game Boy
Super Bombliss – Super Famicom
Super Bombliss DX – Game Boy Color
Tetris Time Warp – New Title

Now, stepping back through time and playing some of these obscure titles has been a treat. To see how Tetris was over in Japan and the different variations of the game was great and, I will say, they were all incredibly fun.

The problem is if you look at the list, there are duplicates in there. Tetris for MS-DOS and Apple II are the same game, just a different port. Super Tetris 2 is another example as is Super Bombliss. I appreciate having different versions in there; however, when you go into (what to perceive to be) a different game and find it’s the same title just as a port on a different platform, you can’t help but feel disappointed.

The other issue is the lack of nostalgia. Tetris on the NES is missing, Tetris on the Game Boy is (sort of) missing (more on that in a bit), Tetrisphere for the N64 is missing, and so many other variations of the game that have appeared here in the West. Those are the games we grew up on and those are the ones we would expect to see in a collection. Going in this direction was a gamble and had the list of games not contained duplicates to fill up space, it could have been forgivable. We could have had a very unique experience playing a lot of the games that didn’t reach Western shores to celebrate 40 years of Tetris; however, we were given a collection that looked slapped together without much thought or care.

It will be cool to some (and it is cool to me) but the effort seemed to go more into the timeline than the actual selection of games.

A New Entry into the Series

Not all is lost as they included a brand-new game in Tetris Time Warp!

This brings modern Tetris to you in bright, colorful, hi-resolution but it doesn’t truly do much to re-invent the wheel… but it doesn’t have to. It’s Tetris, after all. So, what makes Tetris Time Warp stand out?

Time Travel!

While you are playing Tetris in the most standard way possible, you will encounter some Tetriminos that look a bit different. Clear lines that contain these pieces and you will leave your game, get sent back through time, and into either a new hi-res remake of Tetris for the Game Boy, a version of Bombliss, or a mode of Tetris where you have to clear broken lines. There is a countdown timer on the left and when the timer reaches zero or if you “die,” (reach the top of the screen), you will be transported back to the present to continue your game. Clearing enough lines in the past will cause you to jump through time to another of the three games from the past. This will continue until one of the two exit conditions is met. These time leaps give you a bonus to your score.

It’s an awesome concept BUT it’s not executed as well as it should. While you can predict when you’ll go back in time, when you get there, you don’t get a Tetrimino at the top of the screen. Instead, and a lot of times this is true, the piece will be dead center on the screen and about to confirm its placement, giving you next to no time to react. When you are sent back to the present, the same is also true, leaving the player no time to observe and remember where they left off. This has ended a few runs and is highly annoying so while the concept was great on paper, the execution could have been more finely-tuned.

As for game modes, you also have a time attack mode and two 150-line clear modes. Both modes are the same… just clear 150 lines but the first mode uses the new Tetris Time Warp graphics, and the second one uses the remade Game Boy graphics (Complete with the Game Boy sound effects!) This is why I alluded to the Game Boy Tetris earlier in the review because if you play this 150-line clear mode, it’s almost like you’re playing a hidden 16th game.

The Stars of the Show

As for the winners, I found myself having the most fun with Super Tetris 2 + Bombliss for the Super Famicom. While the Tetriminos do feel a bit slippery to maneuver, it was the most satisfying game if you want a nice and classic Tetris experience. Plus, you get to also play Bombliss in which you need to clear lines by causing bombs to explode. How do you do that? The tetriminos can be made entirely or partially of bombs and if you clear a line with a tetrimino that has a bomb in it, it will explode. Simple, fun, and more challenging!

Obviously, including Tetris Battle Gaiden was a MAJOR win. Out of all of the Japanese versions of Tetris, this one has gained the biggest following. Clearing lines and sending lines to your opponent in a 1v1 battle for supremacy was a huge advancement in the series and this game (no matter what iteration) is still played competitively today. If anything, this title is THE star of the collection and will give you hours upon hours of fun.

And then there’s the new title Tetris Time Warp. While it’s nothing new, the time travel feature is a great novelty even with its flaws but the hidden Game Boy remaster is a true blast to the past that, while not completely, will sate your nostalgia hunger.

Finally, I have to give it to the original Tetris on the Electronika 60. If you’re going for a historical piece in the form of a gaming collection, then you need to include the one that started it all. While it is very clunky and about as basic as basic can be, just to have the ability to play it and experience the very first Tetris is a massive treat and it definitely stands out as a highlight of the collection.

Overall

Depending on your view of things, this collection could be amazing or a severe disappointment. I will be brutally honest here. The gaming industry as a whole has caused me to not pay as much attention to titles as I used to in days past. That being said, I was aware that a Tetris collection was coming out and when the opportunity came up to review it, I jumped on it because, again, I grew up on Tetris and it has, historically, been an amazing game. That being said, I will admit that I did not look at the list of titles included ahead of time so when I jumped in and expected to see all of the games I played growing up and didn’t get a single one of them, my disappointment was immeasurable.

However, on the other hand, I was being given a collection of games I had never played before so it was like a whole new Tetris world being opened up to me. Therefore, and this should go without saying because I am a reviewer, I wasn’t going to let my disappointment affect the score. I was going to play through every title and judge the collection for what it was.

With that little disclaimer out of the way, I can say that there are some highlights to this collection but I feel it falls short of doing Tetris justice. It has nothing to do with the enjoyment of the games as every single game in here is fun to play and I got stuck for hours on a few of them because of all of the fun I was having. How it falls short is the sheer laziness of putting the same game in there multiple times. Just because it’s on a different console doesn’t mean it needs to be in there. If the developers felt the need to do that, they could have just created one entry and put all the ports in a sub-menu within that entry.

Laying them out and making them seem as if they were new/different games was deceptive and unnecessary. This cut down on the variety of what was offered and could have opened the doors to throw in some of the Western titles to give a better mix, thus erasing my lack of nostalgia complaint.

Plus, the timeline being front and center was a mistake. As proud as they are of their history, gamers want to play games and the games should have been in your face from the moment you fired up the game. The timeline should have been in the menu on top for people to access with a push of a button but, instead, it was reversed.

How much you will desire this collection depends on your point of view. If you want to experience a bunch of Tetris games that barely (if at all) made it to the West, this is a must-have collection; however, if you’re expecting all of the games you grew up playing, you are going to be severely disappointed.

Does it mean that the games included weren’t fun? No. They are great and even if you were expecting something different, you’re still going to have a lot of fun with this title. This means the biggest mistake is going to be the execution of the overall idea of the project. That, I believe, is the most disappointing aspect of it.