Tetris Forever

 
I was disappointed with this collection. I expected going into it that there would be less variety in the games than the Atari 50 collection (my post on that), but even the storytelling feels like a step down.

The whole thing just kinda fizzles out roughly at the mid 90's. Aside from the 1 original game, Tetris Time Warp, there are no playable games past the 90's, and Super Bombliss DX is the only other game from past 1994. While the narrative on the other hand mentions games past the 90's, it doesn't have much of a story to tell with most games past the 80's.

On the bright side, the stuff from the 80's was interesting, and for better or for worse it takes up like 2/3 of the narrative. The old videos from Henk Rodgers were the best highlight in my eyes.

Trying out the games on here made me realize just how little I care for old versions of Tetris, which sucks because I the only version that has all the stuff I like, Tetris Time Warp, isn't one I like much either. Tetris Time Warp has the hold and bag systems, and rewards t-spins and combos just like I like, but its main gimmick, the time warp, breaks up the gameplay in what I find to be a really jarring way.

It's cool to at least see that Digital Eclipse has turned this stuff into a series, "Gold Master Series". Turns out Tetris Forever is actually the 3rd entry, and Atari 50 isn't 1 of them, meaning I've totally miss 2 of these already, The Making of Karateka, and Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story. Maybe I'll check them out in the future, I dunno. Hopefully those 2, and future collections have more interesting stories and treasures to share.

One last thing, I wanna talk a bit about Tetris Battle Gaiden. I decided to play through it since it looked cute and interesting. Unfortunately I ended up not really enjoying its new mechanics. The special abilities were just so powerful that they undermine the core Tetris gameplay I think. There is an option to just play with normal Tetris rules though, so I can enjoy the cute sprites and core Tetris gameplay in peace (or at least as much as I can enjoy old Tetris gameplay).


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