The New Tetris

"Tetris on Nintendo 64 hasn't been this much fun till now."

Whether you are a console gamer or a PC gamer, you must have at least know what the world’s most famous game, Tetris, is. Tetris was the first game appeared in Nintendo Gameboy. This simple little brick game has attracted gamers of all ages and both male and female gamers too. However, as time goes on, sometimes classic games like Tetris may need of under going a new modern style of gameplay. People at H2O Software brings you ‘The Next Tetris’ and you would not believe how much it has changed since Tetrisphere (Don’t you just love sarcasm?).

To my surprise that H2O has kept The New Tetris like how it was. This is not your futuristic cyber-punkish Tetrisphere, this is the plain old Tetris was a few new twist. For starter, you do not have to worry about estimating where to drop your pieces. The New Tetris also adds a shadow of your current piece at the bottom of your screen, telling you exactly where the piece will fall. This may be cheap to veteran Tetris players but it does help the novice players. Next is the Hold Piece feature. This allows you to place you favorite block off to the side and swap it into the game exactly when you need it. Also, they added Multi-Squares and Mono-Squares, which are 4x4 blocks created in special arrangements that give you bonus lines when cleared. Other than that, you got yourself the old school Tetris. Some may think these new options are useless, but believe me, once you get a long stick, you might as well as hold it until you build up your ‘tetris’ and then switch it and drop the stick and feed your opponent(s) 4 extra lines.

Graphically, Tetris is Tetris. We have the colorful blocks comes in all kind of shapes. We also got the exotic backgrounds displaying the Seven Wonders of the World in high resolution details. You can stack bricks in anicent Greece with white columns and golden armors in display. When you clear enough lines, you can a treat to see famous monument, which is rendered in full 3D. A camera fly-by shows you the buildings from all angles. It's nice, after a long time of playing Tetris. Likewise, the frame rate is not really a big problem in puzzle games like Tetris.

When you first hear the music from Tetrisphere, you would be surprised how could cartridge base midi music be so high quality? The composer Neil D. Voss has done a great job with Tetrisphere’s music, we were not surprise that he has compose the music for The New Tetris too. The full-stereo tunes come alive with a mixture of techno beats, plenty of sampled chants and a wide array of ethnic instruments. With India-mix-with-Egyptian style music for “Pyramid” level, you would not believe how talented Neil D. Voss is. The sound effects are basic with clank and slide sound. Of course, the sound quality was too, high quality. This makes The New Tetris the best sound and music game for N64 yet.

In conclusion, The New Tetris may look old but it is packed with full of fun and new gameplay that would keep you going with your Nintendo 64. Not to mention you can play against 3 of your friends (or enemies) and fill their screen with your added line by getting ‘tetris’. You will be lost in this game especially when your ears are with the upbeat techno tune and your eyes gaze at the screen urging for a ‘tetris’ to come. Forget your old Gameboy Tetris, The New Tetris is here.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/29/00, Updated 08/07/01