Back to the Past: Tetris

 

 

Russians are very intelligent. Tetris, which is based on a simple concept turned addictive gameplay, is the proof of their intelligence. I think there is hardly any gamer who has not played this simple awesome game. Released in 1984 in Russia and 1986 in North America, this puzzle video game, built by Alexey Pajitnov , had created a worldwide phenomenon. The game boasts nine Guiness World Records and it was the most ported video game. The Gameboy version was seemingly popular during the 1980s. Gameplay is very simple. Random sequences of different tetrominoes (or structures formed from 4 square blocks) fall to the playing area. The objective of the game is to place the tetrominoes in the playing area and create a horizontal line without gaps to score points. The more horizontal lines broken (max 4 lines), the more points you get. You can reaarange the tetrominoes by rotating 90 degrees from pressing a button before placing them on the playing area. The game also has a gravity effect. When a horizontal line is broken, the tetrominoes above takes its place. Intact tetrominoes keeps its shape, but broken tetrominoes tends to fill any gap below its position. If those broken tetrominoes fills up the gap and create another horizontal line, the line will also be broken giving you bonus points. This is called chain reaction. The player can drop the tetrominoes at a greater speed by pressing another button, so it allows the gamer not to wait for the tetromino to fall. The game gets over when the tetrominoes cross a boundary at the top (sort of overflow). The whole game is basically played for scoring as much points as possible. There are people who love to beat their high scores in Tetris, or even challenge in two player to see who scores more. The game can be played for hours, for days, for months or for years (for people who don't have lives) continuously.

 

 

I started my Tetris experience from the NES version.  Although I played a lot of NES games with many complex gameplay concept but this simple concept somehow managed to keep me playing for hours until my mom scolded me to stop playing. In the NES version I loved the breaks when I leveled up where some cheerleaders danced and went away. I loved how I used to own the computer and give an evil smile. The biggest addict of this game was my dad, who actually bought a handheld game of Tetris and spent hours in the living room and bedroom while trying to beat his high score. Sometimes I manage to take the game from him, and try to beat his score for good. The biggest challenge comes when I reach highest level and it is when things gets pretty interesting, where you are given less time to think, act fast, place the tetromino and on to the next and get higher points. The game gets harder too. I guess this game is pretty good for development of the brain. So for those who wants to improve their brain thinking power, this game is for them. This game is for people who wants to play some casual games for time-killing.

 

The soundtracks in Gameboy version of Tetris was awesome and keeps me into the game. The game had five soundtracks and these tracks are designated with A, B, C. Each music is different from one another and has different mood. For this Back to the Past article, I remixed the music A. Enjoy!!!

 

Soundtrack name: Tetris Music A

Original midi file source: http://home.swipnet.se/~w-22134/nmm/mitten.html

Based on intrumental arrangement of the Russian folk tune called "Korobeiniki" and arranged by Hirokazu Tanaka.