Who doesn’t know Tetris by now, right? Whether you’re a hardcore gamer, casual or simply a passerby who has friends who plays, everyone has heard or seen Tetris. To get people up to speed, Tetris was first created back in 1985 by a software engineer named Alexey Pajitnov. It’s been known to be the most ported games of all time across over 65 consoles/platforms including TI-83 series graphical calculators. It’s a straightforward puzzle game where you move around pieces and create lines to earn the biggest score.

Tetris Forever is an homage to the long running classic puzzle game, Tetris, which pretty much released on everything known to man. This collection contains hours of documentary covering the game along with 15 different iterations of the classic puzzler along with a brand new game: Tetris Time Warp.

Tetris Time Warp is a unique take on the popular series. During your game, you’ll sometime be thrown into a different era where you’ll need to clear lines or make the bomb explore in a very short amount of time but going back to 2024. You can also tackle a 3 minute time attack, modern marathon (clear 150 lines) and 1989 marathon (clear 150 lines on the original Game Boy version). The latter two also exclude any time warping.

The documentaries included given a nice little insight and backstory of the game; which also features over an hour of brand new all-new documentary featurettes revealing the ifelong friendship and creative partnership between Tetris creator Pajitnov and The Tetris Company founder Henk Rogers. They both share new details and information about the true story of long running puzzle games.

The presentation is spot on. The menu are slick and easily navigable. The videos are really interesting as they bring new information to light for those who want to learn more about this popular puzzler; hell even gamers in general. But as expected, most of the games have, visually speaking, not aged well. However they are a faithful representation of their original versions. The new game, Tetris Time Warp, looks great and is highly colorful; reminiscent of Tetris Effect Connected. Soundwise, similar to the visuals. No complaint about the videos, but games soundtracks weren’t as advanced as they are today, so there’s a bit of irritant.

One of the main nuisance is the control scheme. Controls of some of these older games are really counterintuitive and fun killing will which make you prone to making many and costly mistakes. Also, trying to quit a game or go back to the menu is done by clicking the right joystick; bold and questionable move given there’s so many other buttons unused.

Tetris Forever is an interesting piece of history as it lets players deep dive in more obscure, older Tetris games; but as you’d expect, a lot of them haven’t aged well. The new entry, Tetris Time Warp, is a fun new addition to the long running series. But given the age of the games included, it’s hard to recommend Tetris Forever to anyone other than diehard Tetris fans.

Overall
  • 55%
    CX Score - 55%
55%

Summary

Pros

  • Very interesting documentaries
  • Some games have been made available outside of Japan for the first time

Cons

  • Some of the older versions have not aged well
  • Controls on older games are very much counter-intuitive

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