Collection essentials #272: Super Tetris 3 (SNES)

Here’s another instance of “How the heck was this game only released in Japan??” Not only is this a great version of a game beloved around the world, but the entire game is already in English!! No clue what the heck happened here.

I’ve talked about Tetris before. You already know what it is, so I’m not gonna delve into those details. This game has the modes from previous Tetris games that you’d want and expect, but more. One of these is “Sparkliss”, a mode where some squares are replaced with “sparks”. If you clear a row with a spark, it will go off and clear nearby squares in its row and column. The key in this mode is the BIG sparks, which form automatically when you get a square made up of four sparks. This mode has its own set of single-player puzzles to solve. 

But the mode that I think is really cool here is “Magicaliss”. In this mode, colors of the pieces matter a lot. There are four main colors in this mode: red, blue, green and silver. You can change a block’s color on the way down by rotating it a few times, though once it’s placed the color is permanent. The silver blocks are obnoxious since they don’t go away when you clear a normal line. The purpose of the other colors is that, if you manage to get a line clear of exclusively one color, it’s called “Magicaliss”, and all other blocks of that color on the field will also disappear! And perhaps even more importantly, silver blocks will be changed to the color of the Magicaliss, so that’s how you get rid of them. There are also special “wild card” blocks that can count as all colors at once. This is a really fun mode, though I guess the problem with it is that it’s really hard to manipulate colors at all when the speed of the game is high. 

A special multiplayer mode called “Familiss” is also noteworthy, because it lets four people play Tetris at once! I’m not sure if this was the first home version of the game to have that capability, but either way it’s an excellent addition.

Super Tetris 3 is criminally overlooked and is especially worth it if you like Tetris and have friends to play with. The two special modes here (if I’m not mistaken) are still exclusive to this game, so it is absolutely a Tetris version that’s still worth your time today. An overlooked essential hiding in the SNES’s deep library!