Collection essentials #108: Tetris (NES)

Another day, another Tetris. This is Nintendo’s rendition that they released not long after Atari Games lost the rights to Tetris. I already talked a lot about all that, and Tetris itself, in yesterday’s post, so go back and read that if you missed it!

This version made headlines very recently, just a couple months ago, as a kid became the first player to progress so far in the game that it crashed, making him the first person in a certain sense to "beat" the game.

Nintendo’s Tetris was a huge success and is one of the most common NES games. They didn’t merely take the Atari Games version and slap their own label on it. Not at all, in fact. This is a completely different version built from the ground up, with completely different graphics and music, as well as differences in modes available. Nintendo’s Tetris features “Game A” which is a basic game of Tetris where you just play to get a high score until you lose. “Game B” requires you to clear a certain amount of lines before you win. In both modes, you can up the difficulty level, by increasing the speed, and in Game B’s case you can add some amount of randomized blocks to populate the screen. 


Differing opinions are widely held about which NES version of Tetris is better. Both versions have something the other lacks. The unique cooperative mode in unlicensed Tetris is completely missing from Nintendo’s game, but there’s nothing comparable to Game B in the former. And, actually, the glaring flaw with Nintendo’s NES Tetris that really brings it down is the rather baffling fact that it totally lacks any form of 2-player mode. This, for many, is reason enough for people to pick Atari Games’s Tetris as the winner.


However, I’m actually on team Nintendo here. Why? Because I just love Game B and I find it one of the most addictive experiences in all of gaming. Game B cranked to the highest difficulty is super hard, but also super fun and fast. Whenever I boot up Tetris on the NES, I have to keep trying Game B on those settings AT LEAST until I finally get one win. It’s hard to do and I usually die over and over, but you can jump back in so quickly and the random nature of the blocks means you won’t quite get the same experience twice, and it just hooks me every time. On another note, I very much prefer the graphics and music in Nintendo’s version to boot.


I can’t blame people for picking the other Tetris though. As far as I’m concerned, it’s kind of like those old Ted Williams vs. Joe DiMaggio debates among baseball fans. Like, is there truly a wrong choice?? No, and I consider both NES Tetris games to be absolutely essential.

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