A bittersweet episode for me. We recently lost mum; she played so much Tetris in work meetings that my first game boy wore out. Everyone just assumed the most senior physiotherapist in the room was taking notes on a palmtop. A few years ago Pajitnov appeared on a documentary; she fell in love with his accent.
I cannot even count the amount of times I spent playing Tetris in doctor’s offices, during recess, sitting in waiting rooms, and just around my house on weekends, kneeling over an arm of our living room couch, using the side table lamp as a very annoying light source. Tetris is probably the most addictive thing ever created, beating out Haagen-Dazs coffee ice cream and heroin by a wide margin.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention Gameboy Tetris’s inclusion of Korobeiniki. That song wasn’t in either nes Tetris game. Yet it being included in Gameboy Tetris made it “The Tetris theme”
Fun fact I learned by pure accident: There is a version without it as the A-Theme And from what I can piece together, that was 1.0 since the one with it is listed as 1.1 on ROM sites
@@RadikAliceYes, the original Japanese release didn't have The Korobeiniki song, they started including it when the game was released worldwide. The early cartridges without it are very rare
@@RadikAlice so is that where you got dance of the sugar plum fairy from? To my recollection that piece isn't a option, so I'm guessing it was the original A-theme?
Tetris on Game Boy is still a favorite this many years later. Hip Tanaka's chiptune renditions of Russian folk music definitely is iconic. Baseball in green vs. triangle jumps, I wonder which experience is harder.
The music really provided kids with an introduction to classical music. When I think back to my favorite music as a kid, I really have to include Hip Tanaka and Koji Kondo, even though I didn't know who they were at the time.
"On Our Own" is just about the best thing from Bobby Brown and Ghostbusters 2. The utter addictive quality of Tetris was such that my sister never bought another cartridge for her Game Boy because she was THAT addicted those falling blocks.
It's funny, I'd swear I've heard that song more times in the last few years, than I did at the time. It was a minor hit at best in '89, but it seems to have been rediscovered as a great bit of New Jack Swing. (Maybe because of GTA 5 using it on the soundtrack?)
For the full detailed story on how insane the circumstances around getting Tetris out of the iron curtain were, see Gaming Historian's movie-length doc here on youtube.
What I find fascinating about the whole saga is that nobody was acting in bad faith or anything like that. Both Nintendo and Tengen had theoretically valid rights, but it all hinged on the key question: "Is a video game console a kind of computer?" The case really could have gone either way, just depending on how the judge decided to classify consoles.
Oh, Tengen definitely acted in bad faith, just not about that Tetris rights. And Nintendo was hardly above reproach, either. Basically, they were both kinda evil... except in this one case?
Although I've since become obsessed with collecting old games, when I was a kid my family rarely actually bought games. Pack-in games and launch titles were mostly all we had, and I rented/borrowed the rest. This fostered a deep appreciation for games like Tetris, because I played them the most. And a mystique for games I had to rent like Donkey Kong Country: making those seem larger than they were and nostalgic in a different way
redoing game boy world makes me nostalgic for when you used to use that NGE "on the next episode" song for your own next episode previews, i can understand why you stopped but i still thought it was a funny no-selled reference
it basically means playing it straight, instead of playing it up, you just put it in there without doing anything extra like say, using clips from NGE in every episode to drive the point home, or anything like that
I remember my bewilderment with the N64. It didn't come with an rf cable, didn't come with a game. Didn't come with a second controller. NES, SNES, and Gameboy all came loaded. By the time GameCube came out, I i was already jaded.
Somehow EVERY SINGLE TIME I'd excitedly hook up my brand new console and realize, in horror, that I didn't have the needed rf cable. "PLEASE TAKE ME TO RADIO SHACK PLEEEEEASE MOM".
I had a similar reaction when I got my Switch. After the Wii, DSi, and 3DS all came absolutely packed with apps and minigames and other things to play with, I was a little shocked to boot up the Switch and just land on a blank screen telling me to go buy a game. It felt so cold and... unNintendo.
@@David-ln8qh it drove me nuts. The SNES came with both an RF adapter and the composite cables. At the time, my TV only supported RF because we were broke and only had old TVs. So after spending my hard earned money that I spent two years saving only to find out I couldn't even play my new N64... I was just broken. I had to save up another $25 for an RF adapter. Mind you I didn't get any kind of allowance or anything. I saved my bus money, or skipped lunch.
These discussions baffle me as I recall the N64 I got was a package deal, with all cables included. This was in Europe, so maybe the circumstances were different, but a console without the necessary cables is something I've never even heard of. The closest I got to that experience is the New 3DS selling without a charger.
It was sold separately for years before the Player’s Choice series too… as soon as they introduced the Basic model. I got mine with a bonus Link’s Awakening in 1994 and they had Tetris for sale in a non-Player’s Choice box on the Walmart shelf at the time. Player’s Choice series hadn’t even started yet. There is a slight difference to the Tetris logo on the later ones I saw and I’ve seen that same difference (not an oxymoron) on the labels of several loose copies. From memory, it looks a bit more cartoony with more defined edges to the lettering… like the outline of collegiate letters.
There's a book called "Tetris: The Games We Play," by a fellow named Box Brown. It's a graphic novel that outlines games in human history, the history of Nintendo, and the history of Tetris, leading up to the kerfuffle of distribution rights, largely due to language barriers. It's a really fun read! Well, until you get to the year 1998...
I believe you made it to level 20 in Tetris. I wasn't even that good at the game, I just had the Game Boy very early in its lifecycle and not many games to pick from, and I remember getting to level 17-18 a couple of times. One should never underestimate a kid with lots of free time and video game system that took 3 months (much had to go to my savings account) of paper route money to get.
What’s funny is, according to The Cutting-Room Floor, the NES Nintendo version of Tetris actually does have an unfinished two-player game in the code. Game Genie code ZALAPP will activate this mode, but since it’s unfinished, it’s fairly glitchy.
It's this version of Tetris I always come back to. My GB still gets put into regular use, and it's 99% of the time just as a Tetris-playing device. Can't be doing with Tetris on a smartphone, it's got to have tangible controls. And I don't care much for infinite spin - it feels too much like cheating. If I need a game of Tetris it's this I turn to, often when listening to podcasts or watching RUclips videos. Indeed I was played along whilst watching this - it seemed apt. Managed to rack up a score of 308,863 and 202 lines on my third attempt. Saving it here for posterity now that the GB has been switched off. I find level 20 is where the speed gets to the point where my finger muscles can't mash the d-pad fast enough to get the blocks where I want to in time. Never seen the space shuttle ending in Game A - hopefully one day.
I feel like Tetris DX is the pinnacle of this sort of thing (due to block moving speed), although if I could jump ahead a couple of systems, Tetris DS was sort of astonishingly an amazing Nintendo-injected Tetris game. Still, while I really love Tetris Effect: Connected, there's absolutely a kind of magic in all of Nintendo's adaptations. I remember an interview many years back when, after talking about all the standardized gameplay rules The Tetris Company enforced on licensees, they were asked about Tetris DS and sort of just laughed and said, "Yeah, we never have to worry about what Nintendo does. It always turns out great."
How you know you're a child of the 80s and 90s: paying for your new Game Boy at Woolworth's with birthday money, allowance, and loose change you earned from lemonade stands.
You mention the ever increasing speed. Back when I was good at the game I noticed that while the falling speed kept increasing, the 'drop' speed of holding down was always constant. So at a certain point the falling speed was faster than the speed of holding down so it became advantageous to try to continue playing while also holding down to give a scant extra moment to process. This is my memory of playing, but I cannot seem to find a confirmation of anyone else exploiting this programming quirk.
It's kind of deliciously ironic that, even though Satoru Okada won the fight on what the Game Boy hardware should be, Tetris and its success is more reflective of Gunpei Yokoi's original vision of the Game Boy as a fun, simple, pick up and play toy, instead of Okada's vision of a portable NES.
8:02 You made it pretty close to the speed cap. At Level 20, pieces fall one row every three frames. 10:39 NES Tetris happens to have incomplete 2 Player functionality still present on the cartridge; it doesn't have its own playfield frame (it instead draws messily over the 1 Player layout, with some incorrect block palettes as a result) and has a couple of other small bugs or quirks, but the core functionality is intact and accessible with a single Game Genie code. I think this lends some support to the theory that Nintendo intentionally sought to highlight GB Tetris's link cable functionality.
The first Tetris I ever owned was for the DS, though I mostly grew up playing both NES versions at other people's houses, and surprisingly enough I wouldn't come into my own legit copy of Tetris for the Game Boy until a few years ago when I bought a Super Game Boy off of eBay and it happened to come with a copy of Tetris in the slot.
There is a ROM hack of the original GB Tetris named "Rosy Retrospection" that adds many modern features: saves high scores, store piece, better RNG, shadow piece, 3 previews, hard drops and many more.
i recently got into gb tetris again through the NSO release and it's kind of wild they programmed in a high score function even though it only lasted as long as the same battery and cart stayed in the console and the power wasn't switched off. i guess you were supposed to take a polaroid of the screen, or write them down and hope your friends took you on faith.
This is my favorite version of Tetris. Others I’ve tried either lack something this one has or do something I don’t like. The music in this version pretty much IS Tetris music, and I don’t like when a Tetris game doesn’t have these tunes. I also like how the scoring works here. I’ve played versions where you get a pittance of points for clearing a line. This version makes it feel like you’re actually accomplishing something with your score. Also, I don’t like versions that instantly drop a block to the bottom when you press down. This version lets you speed up the drop without doing that.
I once made a video list of the "Top 10 Most-Perfect Games of All Time" (which I never ended up publishing) that, in hindsight, I realised _unforgiveably_ omitted the Gameboy version of Tetris. Even if it isn't the greatest version of the game ever made, it was absolutely perfect for what it needed to be at that point in time, and is the most-iconic version of the greatest puzzle game ever made, bar none.
The biggest reason I bought a Switch was waiting and hoping they would release Tetris on their online subscription. It’s the most played game on my Switch to date.
I still remember how every Boomer referred to ALL video games post 1988-89 as "Mario!" Pretty sure there still 80 somethings out there seeing the Fallout series and being like, "That's from that Mario you are always playing, right?"
Does anyone remember whether holding select on the level selection adding 10 to the level (a heart symbol) was in the manual or only in stuff like game guides and magazines?
Tetris across it's various incarnations is probably one of my most played games ever. I am yet to own a console or a computer with out a form of Tetris on it. The gameboy release I found particularly enjoyable had a copy of it that I played off and on on my gbc and gba until I got a DS and Tetris DS for it.
When we got our NES it came with SMB. I begged my dad to buy Castlevania and he was hesitant, but got it anyway. He ended up loving the game and we beat it together.
It's sort of amazing to think that Nintendo still dislikes pack-in games considering they made billions of dollars off of giving away Tetris, Super Mario Bros. and Wii Sports.
I mean what else can you even say about tetris?! I bought a backlit modded gb pocket from someone online a couple years ago and amassed a small collection of games, better believe tetris was definitely on my list! but this is definitely one of my all time favorite gameboy games.
I think the brilliance of Nintendo’s game boy lineup plans can’t be overstated here. It gets all the way back to Gunpei Yokoi’s original plan with the game and watch of “giving bored businessmen something to play while riding the subway”. The entire concept of a portable system was new and this a decade before even primitive cell phone games started gaining adoption. Your options when traveling were Walkman or read (yuck). With game boy, it looked still better than any Tiger electronics stand alone, it had enough battery life to be functional, and it came pack in with a phenomenon that even middle aged consumers of 1989 who had a limited understanding of video games would want to pick up and play? The only time they ever replicated this was Wii sports in 2006
(8:02) I've made it to level 20 before as well, and I believe that's as fast as Tetris on the Game Boy gets. (On the NES version, the speed reaches its cap at level 29, which is ludicrously fast, but the Game Boy version's max speed is slightly more reasonable.) (8:25) The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy song is only on the NES version. (11:28) You can also win by being the first player to complete 30 lines. (11:47) To be more accurate... If you clear a double, you send 1 line to the opponent. Clearing a triple sends 2 lines to the opponent. And, clearing a Tetris sends 4 lines.
Correction at 1:25 - Nintendo included a power adapter for the original Famicom but not the AV Famicom or Super Famicom, you were expected to reuse the power adapter from the original Famicom. World of Nintendo's unboxing video for the Family Computer shows the power adapter in the packaging.
I was a kid in Singapore when Tetris was booming and the gameboy didn't catch on the same way, thanks to bootleg lcd Tetris handhelds that sold for the equivalent of a few dollars. They were so widespread, people who would never touch a console were playing.
Haha. I was recording MP footage with the help of my mother, who never plays video games. So I had to play my side slowly and clumsily out of filial duty and also a desire to get more than like 30 seconds of footage
@@JeremyParish she had you on the ropes! also I want to say, thank you for making all of these videos. they're fantastic, and I know they are time consuming.
Some corrections/additional insight for Jeremy with this video...... When the Game Boy launched, it was EXTREMELY controversial that they went with Tetris over Super Mario Land as the system pack in game. EXTREMELY controversial within the gaming community that they did that. Myself and a lot of my friends in particular, were pissed off that we had to basically get our parents to pay an additional $20 (price of a Game Boy game at launch) for Super Mario Land on top of the $90-100 for the Game Boy itself. NONE of us wanted Tetris, none of us even knew what Tetris was, as it should be noted that Nintendo Power was still a subscription only magazine at this point and Game Pro and EGM were still several months away from launching just yet. It was a massive scam, in the eyes of a lot of gamers at the time that they were stuck with a game they didn't want or like (Tetris) and had to pay extra for the game they DID want (Super Mario Land). Nintendo effectively pissed off a lot of kids and parents with the decision to put Tetris in as the pack in title, but to it's credit it was a massive risk that paid off in so far as helped make Tetris a household name in a way. And for those who played it and liked it or begrudgingly came to like it, it probably wetted their appetites so that when it's spiritual successor Dr Mario launched, Nintendo has created a fanbase for such puzzle block games that Dr Mario was able to sell. Did it make adults who normally don't play video games buy the Game Boy? No. But the kids who it ensnarled did grow up to be the demo for similar puzzle games like Columns and Dr Mario and the inevitable string of Tetris remakes that followed.
As someone who was 3 when the Game Boy released, I appreciate the contemporary perspective. It truly seems like Gamers will be Gamers regardless of era...
Thinking about the past... I remember my parents buying my brother and I Game Gears with Sonic 2 as a pack-in and us, in our naive youth, complaining that we didn't get a Game Boy. Not sure how I feel about my judgement then. But, as of today, I have Tetris on Game Boy, not a Game Gear.
I clearly remember a fight where I *begged* my dad to get me a Super Nintendo instead of a Sega Genesis for Christmas. I had an NES and a neighbor kid had a Genesis, and while it was certainly fun, I didn't care for Sonic the Hedgehog and really wanted to play Super Mario World. "But the Genesis is more technically advanced." "Yeah, but I don't like any of the games so it doesn't matter." Happily, I got a SNES and managed to fully clear Super Mario World.
@@thenathanhaines well... some victories are worth celebrating. Only when we had an NES, did i have the same console as my friends. Weirdly enough, we traded it in for an Atari 2600 or a 5200? I remember that before my parents surprised me with a Sega Genesis with Sonic 2 (no joke) packed in.... and my friends and i no longer had anything to talk about on the playground... until Pogs.
Tetris was probably my most played game on the Gameboy because it was a packin and I didn't own many other games for the system because the original screen had such terrible ghosting in addition to being hard to see.
I was pretty proud of my personal best, 262 lines but I have heard of Uli Horner that has a set a record at 441! I could reach level 25 pretty easily. With such a score, I would be asked to prove it often, and will get close to it on demand... Tetris Game Boy is truly random, which makes it a difficult version...
I received a GameBoy for Christmas 1990. Tetris was never my jam (It's good, and I see the appeal, just wasn't for me,) but I remember it for much different reason.... My mom bought it in September that year and killed the batteries playing Tetris... then she put the damn dead batteries back in the box and wrapped it up. Years later, she wondered why I was a bit ticked when my new copy of Donkey Kong Country was not shrink wrapped and she tried to gaslight me saying it was new... when it had a save file on it. Well, there are worse things parents can do to a child. At least the devices were tested and verified working......
I think the Japanese people also did not understand the Mattel handheld electronic games as a factor. Before Microvision, a Mattel handheld had one game built into it. That was it, but, when you bought it, you got a game straight out of the box, so getting a Gameboy, with NO GAME?! Uh uh, not in America.
How about another recent example of a console not shipping with what is needed the turbo/ pc engine mini not shipping with a power brick, and people using incorrect bricks causing consoles to get fried.
Did really american GameCubes not come with AV cables? Woah, here in Europe did. I mean, we did have our own battle with the dreaded PAL 50 Hz, but at least we could use the thing out of the box... ...Until you needed to save, but that was a global slap in the face. Edit: I don't play Wiisports all that much but I am close to max the clock in Wiifit Plus, that has to count for something...
Don't get me wrong I love usage of the super Gameboy II. But is there a reason you don't just use straight footage from the analogue pocket ? Is it to use the color palletes?
I don't believe that the "pack ins" were really made for budget conscious American NES buyers... I don't believe Nintendo of America's management staff saw things like that at all. You gotta figure that Nintendo launched in 1985 and as soon as 1986 Atari Corp tried to come back and bribe gamers for market share and Sega offered their Sega Master System with a pack in... so it was competition for perceived value at a time when gamer magazines were nonexistent so it was difficult to know anything about these machines other than playing them.
A bittersweet episode for me. We recently lost mum; she played so much Tetris in work meetings that my first game boy wore out. Everyone just assumed the most senior physiotherapist in the room was taking notes on a palmtop. A few years ago Pajitnov appeared on a documentary; she fell in love with his accent.
Thanks for calling out my Mom with that Wii Sports Bowling footage, Jeremy.
(She STILL plays it.)
She’s a classy lady
My dad still has the Wii hooked up too and uses it every week. Wii Sports Resort and Super Swing Golf, why buy another game again?
I miss my Wii. I'd still be playing Wii Sports every now and then if I could. Especially the golf game.
I cannot even count the amount of times I spent playing Tetris in doctor’s offices, during recess, sitting in waiting rooms, and just around my house on weekends, kneeling over an arm of our living room couch, using the side table lamp as a very annoying light source.
Tetris is probably the most addictive thing ever created, beating out Haagen-Dazs coffee ice cream and heroin by a wide margin.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention Gameboy Tetris’s inclusion of Korobeiniki. That song wasn’t in either nes Tetris game. Yet it being included in Gameboy Tetris made it “The Tetris theme”
Fun fact I learned by pure accident: There is a version without it as the A-Theme
And from what I can piece together, that was 1.0 since the one with it is listed as 1.1 on ROM sites
@@RadikAliceYes, the original Japanese release didn't have The Korobeiniki song, they started including it when the game was released worldwide. The early cartridges without it are very rare
@@RadikAlice so is that where you got dance of the sugar plum fairy from? To my recollection that piece isn't a option, so I'm guessing it was the original A-theme?
I still play Tetris on Gameboy. It's one of my favorite ways to play. It's a true classic that will never go out of style.
Despite what Jeremy says at 13:15, haha
Tetris on Game Boy is still a favorite this many years later. Hip Tanaka's chiptune renditions of Russian folk music definitely is iconic. Baseball in green vs. triangle jumps, I wonder which experience is harder.
The music really provided kids with an introduction to classical music. When I think back to my favorite music as a kid, I really have to include Hip Tanaka and Koji Kondo, even though I didn't know who they were at the time.
Tanaka’s rendition of Korobeyniki is a classic for sure but don’t sleep on Type B, his original composition
"On Our Own" is just about the best thing from Bobby Brown and Ghostbusters 2.
The utter addictive quality of Tetris was such that my sister never bought another cartridge for her Game Boy because she was THAT addicted those falling blocks.
It's funny, I'd swear I've heard that song more times in the last few years, than I did at the time. It was a minor hit at best in '89, but it seems to have been rediscovered as a great bit of New Jack Swing.
(Maybe because of GTA 5 using it on the soundtrack?)
For the full detailed story on how insane the circumstances around getting Tetris out of the iron curtain were, see Gaming Historian's movie-length doc here on youtube.
Yep, mentioned that in my recent Tengen Tetris video.
What I find fascinating about the whole saga is that nobody was acting in bad faith or anything like that. Both Nintendo and Tengen had theoretically valid rights, but it all hinged on the key question: "Is a video game console a kind of computer?" The case really could have gone either way, just depending on how the judge decided to classify consoles.
Oh, Tengen definitely acted in bad faith, just not about that Tetris rights. And Nintendo was hardly above reproach, either. Basically, they were both kinda evil... except in this one case?
Although I've since become obsessed with collecting old games, when I was a kid my family rarely actually bought games. Pack-in games and launch titles were mostly all we had, and I rented/borrowed the rest.
This fostered a deep appreciation for games like Tetris, because I played them the most. And a mystique for games I had to rent like Donkey Kong Country: making those seem larger than they were and nostalgic in a different way
redoing game boy world makes me nostalgic for when you used to use that NGE "on the next episode" song for your own next episode previews, i can understand why you stopped but i still thought it was a funny no-selled reference
Dude, same. I used to love that!
I don’t know what a no-selled reference is but I’m glad you enjoyed it
Don't believe I have ever heard the term no -selled either
it basically means playing it straight, instead of playing it up, you just put it in there without doing anything extra like say, using clips from NGE in every episode to drive the point home, or anything like that
I still sing it to myself at the end of every episode.
Tetris is one of those games that never get old.
I played NES Tetris back when collecting was less expensive. Three hours was a “Short” session for me😂
The microvision somewhat recently had a home brew version of Tetris made for it. Goes to show Tetris can be ported to just about anything.
Hadn’t heard about that. I’ll give it a look!
@@JeremyParish ruclips.net/video/9gqDIIBmB2c/видео.htmlsi=hAABIvR0ieHFjTs5
I remember my bewilderment with the N64. It didn't come with an rf cable, didn't come with a game. Didn't come with a second controller. NES, SNES, and Gameboy all came loaded. By the time GameCube came out, I i was already jaded.
Somehow EVERY SINGLE TIME I'd excitedly hook up my brand new console and realize, in horror, that I didn't have the needed rf cable. "PLEASE TAKE ME TO RADIO SHACK PLEEEEEASE MOM".
Also was confused why Mario 64 didn't come with the system.
I had a similar reaction when I got my Switch. After the Wii, DSi, and 3DS all came absolutely packed with apps and minigames and other things to play with, I was a little shocked to boot up the Switch and just land on a blank screen telling me to go buy a game. It felt so cold and... unNintendo.
@@David-ln8qh it drove me nuts. The SNES came with both an RF adapter and the composite cables. At the time, my TV only supported RF because we were broke and only had old TVs. So after spending my hard earned money that I spent two years saving only to find out I couldn't even play my new N64... I was just broken. I had to save up another $25 for an RF adapter. Mind you I didn't get any kind of allowance or anything. I saved my bus money, or skipped lunch.
These discussions baffle me as I recall the N64 I got was a package deal, with all cables included. This was in Europe, so maybe the circumstances were different, but a console without the necessary cables is something I've never even heard of. The closest I got to that experience is the New 3DS selling without a charger.
It was sold separately for years before the Player’s Choice series too… as soon as they introduced the Basic model. I got mine with a bonus Link’s Awakening in 1994 and they had Tetris for sale in a non-Player’s Choice box on the Walmart shelf at the time. Player’s Choice series hadn’t even started yet. There is a slight difference to the Tetris logo on the later ones I saw and I’ve seen that same difference (not an oxymoron) on the labels of several loose copies. From memory, it looks a bit more cartoony with more defined edges to the lettering… like the outline of collegiate letters.
There's a book called "Tetris: The Games We Play," by a fellow named Box Brown. It's a graphic novel that outlines games in human history, the history of Nintendo, and the history of Tetris, leading up to the kerfuffle of distribution rights, largely due to language barriers. It's a really fun read! Well, until you get to the year 1998...
Sounds interesting 😄
I believe you made it to level 20 in Tetris. I wasn't even that good at the game, I just had the Game Boy very early in its lifecycle and not many games to pick from, and I remember getting to level 17-18 a couple of times. One should never underestimate a kid with lots of free time and video game system that took 3 months (much had to go to my savings account) of paper route money to get.
What’s funny is, according to The Cutting-Room Floor, the NES Nintendo version of Tetris actually does have an unfinished two-player game in the code. Game Genie code ZALAPP will activate this mode, but since it’s unfinished, it’s fairly glitchy.
Yep. I’ll get into that once I reach Nov 89
We still play Wii Sports occasionally, and I would call mysekf a proper gamer. Gotta respect the best
The game my grandma played every day on her DMG like she had a battle pass to grind
Did not expect to see a clip from the Merced Sun-Star of all newspapers.
It's this version of Tetris I always come back to. My GB still gets put into regular use, and it's 99% of the time just as a Tetris-playing device. Can't be doing with Tetris on a smartphone, it's got to have tangible controls. And I don't care much for infinite spin - it feels too much like cheating. If I need a game of Tetris it's this I turn to, often when listening to podcasts or watching RUclips videos.
Indeed I was played along whilst watching this - it seemed apt. Managed to rack up a score of 308,863 and 202 lines on my third attempt. Saving it here for posterity now that the GB has been switched off. I find level 20 is where the speed gets to the point where my finger muscles can't mash the d-pad fast enough to get the blocks where I want to in time. Never seen the space shuttle ending in Game A - hopefully one day.
I feel like Tetris DX is the pinnacle of this sort of thing (due to block moving speed), although if I could jump ahead a couple of systems, Tetris DS was sort of astonishingly an amazing Nintendo-injected Tetris game. Still, while I really love Tetris Effect: Connected, there's absolutely a kind of magic in all of Nintendo's adaptations. I remember an interview many years back when, after talking about all the standardized gameplay rules The Tetris Company enforced on licensees, they were asked about Tetris DS and sort of just laughed and said, "Yeah, we never have to worry about what Nintendo does. It always turns out great."
Gameboy Tetris has stolen so much of my time on earth. In more recent years it's been Tetris dx though the music isn't as good, I love the color
Bruh that Tetris verses mode makes Mario Kart & it’s Blue Shells & all seem like child’s play by comparison. 😂
interesting little forgotten gem
I figured it would be nice to shed some light on this obscure corner of video game history
This video is gonna ruin it for the video game hipsters for sure
How you know you're a child of the 80s and 90s: paying for your new Game Boy at Woolworth's with birthday money, allowance, and loose change you earned from lemonade stands.
You mention the ever increasing speed. Back when I was good at the game I noticed that while the falling speed kept increasing, the 'drop' speed of holding down was always constant. So at a certain point the falling speed was faster than the speed of holding down so it became advantageous to try to continue playing while also holding down to give a scant extra moment to process. This is my memory of playing, but I cannot seem to find a confirmation of anyone else exploiting this programming quirk.
It's kind of deliciously ironic that, even though Satoru Okada won the fight on what the Game Boy hardware should be, Tetris and its success is more reflective of Gunpei Yokoi's original vision of the Game Boy as a fun, simple, pick up and play toy, instead of Okada's vision of a portable NES.
Very good job on the setup and delivery on the joke about saving high score. I think this may be one of your best scripts.
8:02 You made it pretty close to the speed cap. At Level 20, pieces fall one row every three frames.
10:39 NES Tetris happens to have incomplete 2 Player functionality still present on the cartridge; it doesn't have its own playfield frame (it instead draws messily over the 1 Player layout, with some incorrect block palettes as a result) and has a couple of other small bugs or quirks, but the core functionality is intact and accessible with a single Game Genie code. I think this lends some support to the theory that Nintendo intentionally sought to highlight GB Tetris's link cable functionality.
OMG Kitaru!
The first Tetris I ever owned was for the DS, though I mostly grew up playing both NES versions at other people's houses, and surprisingly enough I wouldn't come into my own legit copy of Tetris for the Game Boy until a few years ago when I bought a Super Game Boy off of eBay and it happened to come with a copy of Tetris in the slot.
This Nintendo Power article is very close to Rocky Horror's "Time Warp" 5:52
Man, Tetris' B theme will always be a CLASSIC tune.
Aw yissss, another Type B appreciator
There is a ROM hack of the original GB Tetris named "Rosy Retrospection" that adds many modern features: saves high scores, store piece, better RNG, shadow piece, 3 previews, hard drops and many more.
i recently got into gb tetris again through the NSO release and it's kind of wild they programmed in a high score function even though it only lasted as long as the same battery and cart stayed in the console and the power wasn't switched off. i guess you were supposed to take a polaroid of the screen, or write them down and hope your friends took you on faith.
Gotta say, very cute name for the hack. Nice play on "Rose-colored glasses"
You're a good writer.
Gameboy Tetris rules.
35 years later Tetris is still a brilliant puzzle game today. 😀👍🎮
This is my favorite version of Tetris. Others I’ve tried either lack something this one has or do something I don’t like. The music in this version pretty much IS Tetris music, and I don’t like when a Tetris game doesn’t have these tunes. I also like how the scoring works here. I’ve played versions where you get a pittance of points for clearing a line. This version makes it feel like you’re actually accomplishing something with your score. Also, I don’t like versions that instantly drop a block to the bottom when you press down. This version lets you speed up the drop without doing that.
I once made a video list of the "Top 10 Most-Perfect Games of All Time" (which I never ended up publishing) that, in hindsight, I realised _unforgiveably_ omitted the Gameboy version of Tetris. Even if it isn't the greatest version of the game ever made, it was absolutely perfect for what it needed to be at that point in time, and is the most-iconic version of the greatest puzzle game ever made, bar none.
The biggest reason I bought a Switch was waiting and hoping they would release Tetris on their online subscription. It’s the most played game on my Switch to date.
one of the best games ever.
I still remember how every Boomer referred to ALL video games post 1988-89 as "Mario!"
Pretty sure there still 80 somethings out there seeing the Fallout series and being like, "That's from that Mario you are always playing, right?"
The only version of Tetris that ranks above the Gameboy one for me is Tetris DS, mostly for all the NES nostalgia.
This is why I've been following you since the Toastyfrog days
Does anyone remember whether holding select on the level selection adding 10 to the level (a heart symbol) was in the manual or only in stuff like game guides and magazines?
This is my preferred version.
I got my Gameboy with the Tetris pack-in and Metroid II. I played them equally, even though I expected the free game to be inferior. I was mistaken.
Tetris across it's various incarnations is probably one of my most played games ever. I am yet to own a console or a computer with out a form of Tetris on it. The gameboy release I found particularly enjoyable had a copy of it that I played off and on on my gbc and gba until I got a DS and Tetris DS for it.
Love your work, Jeremy. And I love the menuet from Bach’s third French Suite because of this game
This Sunday there will be the Classic Tetris Worldchampionchip 2024 for Game Boy. Will be streamt on classictetris Twitch channel.
I have not forgotten.
I first played Tetris on the PC so I was overjoyed when it was the pack in for the first Game Boy.
Even eldritch, extradimensional deities love Tetris!
When we got our NES it came with SMB. I begged my dad to buy Castlevania and he was hesitant, but got it anyway. He ended up loving the game and we beat it together.
It's sort of amazing to think that Nintendo still dislikes pack-in games considering they made billions of dollars off of giving away Tetris, Super Mario Bros. and Wii Sports.
OK, you got me
No battery in Tetris is an important feature, I think. It kept the Game Boy affordable, even with Tetris packed in.
I mean what else can you even say about tetris?! I bought a backlit modded gb pocket from someone online a couple years ago and amassed a small collection of games, better believe tetris was definitely on my list! but this is definitely one of my all time favorite gameboy games.
I really appreciate all your videos, thanks for all those years sharing knowledge
I think the brilliance of Nintendo’s game boy lineup plans can’t be overstated here. It gets all the way back to Gunpei Yokoi’s original plan with the game and watch of “giving bored businessmen something to play while riding the subway”.
The entire concept of a portable system was new and this a decade before even primitive cell phone games started gaining adoption. Your options when traveling were Walkman or read (yuck). With game boy, it looked still better than any Tiger electronics stand alone, it had enough battery life to be functional, and it came pack in with a phenomenon that even middle aged consumers of 1989 who had a limited understanding of video games would want to pick up and play?
The only time they ever replicated this was Wii sports in 2006
(8:02) I've made it to level 20 before as well, and I believe that's as fast as Tetris on the Game Boy gets. (On the NES version, the speed reaches its cap at level 29, which is ludicrously fast, but the Game Boy version's max speed is slightly more reasonable.)
(8:25) The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy song is only on the NES version.
(11:28) You can also win by being the first player to complete 30 lines.
(11:47) To be more accurate... If you clear a double, you send 1 line to the opponent. Clearing a triple sends 2 lines to the opponent. And, clearing a Tetris sends 4 lines.
Correction at 1:25 - Nintendo included a power adapter for the original Famicom but not the AV Famicom or Super Famicom, you were expected to reuse the power adapter from the original Famicom. World of Nintendo's unboxing video for the Family Computer shows the power adapter in the packaging.
I always appreciate seeing your releases
Possibly the most incredible origin story of the '80s.
The gameboy version is def still my favorite
I was a kid in Singapore when Tetris was booming and the gameboy didn't catch on the same way, thanks to bootleg lcd Tetris handhelds that sold for the equivalent of a few dollars. They were so widespread, people who would never touch a console were playing.
I think about A/B testing in real life a lot and a long time ago even started writing a time travel/multi-dimensional game about the idea.
iirc, the speed caps at lvl 30, though lately I mostly have played Tetris DX so it might be different for OG GB Tetris
Nice video!
Hi tolstoj! 😄
GAME BOY WORKS LIVES!!!
I was so stressed up until about 13:06
Haha. I was recording MP footage with the help of my mother, who never plays video games. So I had to play my side slowly and clumsily out of filial duty and also a desire to get more than like 30 seconds of footage
@@JeremyParish she had you on the ropes! also I want to say, thank you for making all of these videos. they're fantastic, and I know they are time consuming.
Some corrections/additional insight for Jeremy with this video......
When the Game Boy launched, it was EXTREMELY controversial that they went with Tetris over Super Mario Land as the system pack in game. EXTREMELY controversial within the gaming community that they did that.
Myself and a lot of my friends in particular, were pissed off that we had to basically get our parents to pay an additional $20 (price of a Game Boy game at launch) for Super Mario Land on top of the $90-100 for the Game Boy itself. NONE of us wanted Tetris, none of us even knew what Tetris was, as it should be noted that Nintendo Power was still a subscription only magazine at this point and Game Pro and EGM were still several months away from launching just yet. It was a massive scam, in the eyes of a lot of gamers at the time that they were stuck with a game they didn't want or like (Tetris) and had to pay extra for the game they DID want (Super Mario Land).
Nintendo effectively pissed off a lot of kids and parents with the decision to put Tetris in as the pack in title, but to it's credit it was a massive risk that paid off in so far as helped make Tetris a household name in a way. And for those who played it and liked it or begrudgingly came to like it, it probably wetted their appetites so that when it's spiritual successor Dr Mario launched, Nintendo has created a fanbase for such puzzle block games that Dr Mario was able to sell. Did it make adults who normally don't play video games buy the Game Boy? No. But the kids who it ensnarled did grow up to be the demo for similar puzzle games like Columns and Dr Mario and the inevitable string of Tetris remakes that followed.
I feel like this is just a "you" issue that you're trying really hard to make into an "everyone else" issue
As someone who was 3 when the Game Boy released, I appreciate the contemporary perspective. It truly seems like Gamers will be Gamers regardless of era...
Thinking about the past... I remember my parents buying my brother and I Game Gears with Sonic 2 as a pack-in and us, in our naive youth, complaining that we didn't get a Game Boy. Not sure how I feel about my judgement then. But, as of today, I have Tetris on Game Boy, not a Game Gear.
I clearly remember a fight where I *begged* my dad to get me a Super Nintendo instead of a Sega Genesis for Christmas. I had an NES and a neighbor kid had a Genesis, and while it was certainly fun, I didn't care for Sonic the Hedgehog and really wanted to play Super Mario World. "But the Genesis is more technically advanced." "Yeah, but I don't like any of the games so it doesn't matter." Happily, I got a SNES and managed to fully clear Super Mario World.
@@thenathanhaines well... some victories are worth celebrating. Only when we had an NES, did i have the same console as my friends. Weirdly enough, we traded it in for an Atari 2600 or a 5200? I remember that before my parents surprised me with a Sega Genesis with Sonic 2 (no joke) packed in.... and my friends and i no longer had anything to talk about on the playground... until Pogs.
On Our Own is an underrated song.
My wife and I play it every Halloween to kick off trick-or-treat for our daughter, it’s a legit bop
Do your plans for Game Boy Works Vol.2 include a similar revisitation to the Game Boy's feline and/or steampunk-themed competitors?
Tetris GB: 30.26 million units
Tetris NES (the version published by Nintendo): 5.58 million units
Source: sell-in figures reported by Nintendo.
Tetris was probably my most played game on the Gameboy because it was a packin and I didn't own many other games for the system because the original screen had such terrible ghosting in addition to being hard to see.
Tetris caro factum est
I like the NES version. The colors just pop.
I remember playing Acid Tetris on the PC alot in '99.
I love the look of NES Tetris. The gameplay does feel a little flat compared to other versions, though.
I loved acid Tetris and still play it today.
Catchy video title. It's also true.
I was pretty proud of my personal best, 262 lines but I have heard of Uli Horner that has a set a record at 441! I could reach level 25 pretty easily. With such a score, I would be asked to prove it often, and will get close to it on demand... Tetris Game Boy is truly random, which makes it a difficult version...
Tengen's version is still my favourite. I blame the music. And the soviet-esque aesthetics!
i am so used to "WDNPS?" being at the end of the video that i was almost worried.
I received a GameBoy for Christmas 1990. Tetris was never my jam (It's good, and I see the appeal, just wasn't for me,) but I remember it for much different reason.... My mom bought it in September that year and killed the batteries playing Tetris... then she put the damn dead batteries back in the box and wrapped it up.
Years later, she wondered why I was a bit ticked when my new copy of Donkey Kong Country was not shrink wrapped and she tried to gaslight me saying it was new... when it had a save file on it.
Well, there are worse things parents can do to a child. At least the devices were tested and verified working......
"It's good, and I see the appeal, just wasn't for me"
You and I both know that just means you weren't good at it.
I think the Japanese people also did not understand the Mattel handheld electronic games as a factor.
Before Microvision, a Mattel handheld had one game built into it. That was it, but, when you bought it, you got a game straight out of the box, so getting a Gameboy, with NO GAME?!
Uh uh, not in America.
My brother in Christ, the Game & Watch line originated in Japan
How about another recent example of a console not shipping with what is needed the turbo/ pc engine mini not shipping with a power brick, and people using incorrect bricks causing consoles to get fried.
To make matters worse the official AC adapter for the PC Engine Mini was quickly sold out so people had to find alternatives.
As a Christian, the analogy at 4:26 amused me. :)
Did really american GameCubes not come with AV cables? Woah, here in Europe did. I mean, we did have our own battle with the dreaded PAL 50 Hz, but at least we could use the thing out of the box...
...Until you needed to save, but that was a global slap in the face.
Edit: I don't play Wiisports all that much but I am close to max the clock in Wiifit Plus, that has to count for something...
U.S. GameCubes came with AV cables. Japanese GCs did not-my GC was a JP import.
good stuff
Don't get me wrong I love usage of the super Gameboy II. But is there a reason you don't just use straight footage from the analogue pocket ? Is it to use the color palletes?
Okay so is this a replacement for the old version of this series or a companion for it?
Sure
I don't believe that the "pack ins" were really made for budget conscious American NES buyers... I don't believe Nintendo of America's management staff saw things like that at all.
You gotta figure that Nintendo launched in 1985 and as soon as 1986 Atari Corp tried to come back and bribe gamers for market share and Sega offered their Sega Master System with a pack in... so it was competition for perceived value at a time when gamer magazines were nonexistent so it was difficult to know anything about these machines other than playing them.
Y-Y-Ya know it!
Tetris on Gameboy was developed by Henk Rodgers' Bulletproof Software, not R&D1.
Nope, BPS just sublicensed it; Nintendo staff developed it: www.mobygames.com/game/42121/tetris/credits/gameboy/?autoplatform=true
Incorrect. R&D1 absolutely developed it. We know this for a fact.
@@JeremyParish all good, happy to be mistaken. I was under the impression that BPS did the Gameboy port and Nintendo did the NES version in-house.
Bobby Brown? Ghostbusters 2? Donald Trump? Who knows what goes on in the mind of Jeremy Parish.
Back in the day when Bobby Brown did movie themes and Trump unironically had his own board game!
The gameboy Tetris the only version I like 🤷♀
Tetris the game is so classic but it gets boring kind of fast in my opinion. The music is iconic though
Your opinion is wrong.
@@thenightstar8312 Can you seriously play Tetris for hours in one sitting, I can't
Activate heart mode. 10x speed from start.
Nobody will believe you, Jeremy.
man tiger handhelds were bullshit..
Guess I’m an oddity. I never found Tetris that engaging for more than a few minutes.
That's because you're just wrong.
@@thenightstar8312 lol fair enough