There are few things in life I would call perfect, since you frankly can improve on just about any aspect of it. I would, however, consider Tetris an exception to that rule. To me and many others around the world, it is, in fact, the perfect game. It’s been around for just about forever and it’s hard to find a soul who has never heard of it in some way, and even tougher to meet anyone who has never played it. Saying that Tetris is an integral part of modern society and it’s an ubiquitous presence in not just gaming, but the whole world is no exaggeration.
That’s why Tetris Forever is so special. It’s a new entry in Digital Eclipse’s Gold Master Series, which saw its debut with last year’s The Making of Karateka, which was followed up by Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story, two excellent game docs in their own right. In this new entry, we see the rise of Tetris as a household name from its humble origins in the Soviet Union as its creator, Alexey Pajitnov, a programmer and mathematician, came up with the idea for what would become the game we know and love today.
There have been a few pieces of entertainment media about Tetris in the last few years, namely Box Brown’s aptly named Tetris: The Game People Play, and the ludicrous and loose movie adaptation of the epic story of bringing the game to the West, but what makes Tetris Forever special doesn’t lie on its historical content, which is certainly rich in and of itself, instead, on how it carries the name forward. Digital Eclipse has already played with the idea of taking the game that’s the subject of the doc and creating a new thing based on it, and in Tetris Forever’s case, it’s a major highlight of the package.
Tetris Time Warp takes the basic and brilliantly simple premise of Tetris and runs with it through what its title denounces, a time warp through the 40 years of the brand, showing off a handful of different games and styles as you stack blocks and score ‘tetris’, you know, the four-block high walls of bricks. For a very limited time, when a certain score threshold is met, you’re taken back in time and have only a few seconds to raise as many points as possible and, with luck, get sent to the next one in line. Four players can join in on the fun, making it a very chaotic experience for sure.
After your travel through Tetris history, you plop back to the main board, where you’re tallied for how well you did, and the game keeps going until you take that journey again. It’s an incredibly entertaining way of playing the already established formula, very creatively put together by the folks at Digital Eclipse. Along with a host of different titles that were part of the multi-billion dollar Hawaii-based franchise, it serves as Gold Master Series’ strongest so far, rivaling the team’s previous and equally amazing and ever-growing Atari 50’s catalog. While there are some notable omissions such as NES and Game Boy Tetris, for obvious licensing reasons, the list is strong and surprisingly varied.
The historical content part of Tetris Forever is equally as strong. We get to see Pajitnov in his natural state of pure joy and happiness with his hugely successful creation as he narrates his own story and what it took for him to land where he is today, including his strong relationship with Henk Rogers, an integral part of what Tetris is today. Rogers also makes an appearance and is equally entertaining to watch, flowing with the passionate energy now in his 70’s that he had as an executive and creator during the Cold War era. And it doesn’t stop there as it shows how the company is doing today and what is in store for the future.
Looking at this from the outside it might look like I’m overstating the importance of this release, but look, Digital Eclipse has already proved to be the best on what they’ve been doing for the past few years, and Tetris Forever is another brick on top of their high stack of quality and lovingly created game docs.
This is an opportunity for those who are curious about how it all came to be, or others who know almost all about it and are eager to discover new facts about Tetris’ colorful history and development. It’ll be a tall order for them to top it, but knowing what I thought the same about their previous releases, anxiety is settling in for whatever they have cooking next!
