Hatris

"Got a cowboy hat? How about a fitted dunce cap? Well, get this game and you’ll get those hats, Fred Astaire like hats, and many, many more"

OPENING STATEMENT
All gamers have heard of Tetris. However, I doubt very many gamers have heard of Hatris, Tetris creator Alexei Pajitnov’s lesser known puzzle game. Nintendo really did not see all that much potential for Hatris, so they kind of published it, and left the game alone. No myriad of sequels, no fanfare, just publishing. I am not here to dispute that Hatris is better than Tetris, because it is not. Tetris is far superior to Hatris in most every aspect. But, Hatris is an adequate puzzle game in its own right, and original Nintendo owners every where should put on a silly hat and give it a go. It is after all, hardly an expensive game.

GAMEPLAY--5
The goal in Hatris is simple. Simply stack five hats of the same type to make them disappear and get points. But, of course, it is not quite that simple. Hats always fall down from the top of the screen (a la Tetris) in pairs of two. So, there are two hats that you must place, falling down side by side. If one of the stacks that you are placing a hat on is higher (much higher) than most of the others, you have a chance to move over that second hat to a stack that works better for that type. This I found rather difficult to do, but when I pulled it off, it paid off big time.

Somehow, though, I found the gameplay in Hatris not as addicting as the gameplay from its more well known cousin. Stacking hats made me feel like a store owner in a hat shop in 1870s Missouri. I began to get bored with the simple gameplay very shortly, as the more complex Tetris kept urging me to play it instead. There is really only so much stacking of hats that can be carried out. The really sad thing is that I seemed to be immortal. The top of the screen was way to high, and, if you placed the right type of hats down, you could get more than twenty in a row, not matching any up, and still keep playing. Only the top hats and party hats provide challenge, as they are four to five times the size of normal hats. Now someone explain that to me.

GRAPHICS--4
I really was not impressed with the graphics displayed in Hatris. The colors are all washed out and muted, as opposed to the bright shades and hues that Tetris brought us. The hats also all seem stiff, and upright, looking more like plastic representations of hats than actual hats. When a party hat is bland looking and perfectly up-right, you know we have a problem.

The faces that the hats rest on change every time you advance to another level. These faces for the most part terrify me with their odd looks. The one that really sticks in my mind is the face that looks like a cheap French mime. And for all of you feminists out there, I will have you know that not a single female face is present in Hatris. And, to think that this game was developed in the Soviet Union, the land where everyone was equal.

MUSIC--5
SOUND--2
Hatris is decidedly average in the audio department. The music is an odd cross of traditional Russian music with typical late eighties instrumental music. The end result is, well, interesting to say the least. I would have liked Pajitnov to simply pick one or the other stylistically, and go with it. As it stands now, the music is adequate, but really nothing worth even mentioning in this review.

The sound effects are quite depressing in their lack of quality. Playing Hatris on the original Nintendo, I first noticed that the sound effects could have been carried out on a Game Boy. And, then, looking at the bland colors, I thought that once again, it could have been carried out on a Game Boy. And this got me to thinking that perhaps Hatris was originally designed for the Game Boy and ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System at the last possible minute. Anyway, the sound effects are poorly done, primitive, and simply put, boring. A beep here, a bleep here, and that is the extent of the work carried out on them. I would have at least expected Nintendo to do some quality checking of Bullet-Proof Software’s release before publishing it, but I suppose Nintendo was busier with higher profile titles.

CONTROL--7
To be a good puzzle game in this vein, you need to have good control. And, Hatris’s control, though hardly innovative, does a decent job. ‘A’ is used to switch the hats around, so the hat on the right is on the left, and vice versa. I had some problems with the consistency of moving a hat after it’s traveling partner landed on another stack. I wish that Bullet-Proof Software had done a better job getting the bugs out of that important aspect of the title. The menus are also very nondescript, and I was blindly navigating them much of the time, which lead to much frustration.

FUN--3
I really did not find Hatris entertaining. After progressing for around three minutes, and with the end nowhere in sight, I considered it more and more of a chore finishing until I lost. And, about forty-five minutes later I finally completely gave up and simply shut the game off, progressing through about twelve continuous levels. In Hatris, when you pass a level, the next level instantly starts, with only the faces at the bottom of the screen changing. All of the hats currently on the board remain in place. There are not many play modes, and, in my opinion, a good puzzle game should always have a boatload of them to make the game stay fresh. Hatris seems like a rushed job, and in the hurry, the entertainment value was left out.

CHALLENGE--LOW
As I said before, I easily progressed through a dozen levels, with no signs of ending whatsoever. I think keeping the hats on the heads every time you change levels was a poorly executed, no effort attempt to increase the difficulty level. It was a horrible failure. When there are six heads, and six hat types, you know the game is going to be easy. There should have been about ten hat types with six heads, to make strategy a more important role. Not to mention, the hats should have been taller and taken up more space on the screen. Even when you progress to later and later levels, the difficulty is still minute, and you should find yourself stacking the hats with ease.

REPLAY VALUE--LOW TO MEDIUM
When a game in the puzzle genre garners a rating this low in the replay value category, that is truly a game’s death knell. When you can really breeze through the game in one sitting, why bother playing it again. Hatris does not have the draw of Bust-a-Move or Tetris in the Multiplayer Modes, so it is not a game that you can really play with friends or family members. Instead, Hatris is one of those titles that you play for a little while, and then you shove it off into a corner, forgetting that you own it.

PROS
*A new puzzle game from genre master Alexei Pajitnov.
*A decent controlling effort.
*The music is unique to say the least.

CONS
*Hatris is unbelievably easy.
*Gameplay is shallow and uninspired.
*The graphics will make you wish you were blind.

CLOSING STATEMENT
Hatris is a shallow little puzzle game that is not remotely difficult, or entertaining, enough for it to have it’s own title. Instead, Hatris should be an extra play mode in the various Tetris games. There it would be an excellent addition to a complete package, instead of being a lazy attempt at some more money.

OVERALL--4

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 08/04/01, Updated 08/04/01