Welcome to another edition of Playing With Power. The review article that looks at all things Nintendo Entertainment System. I love Tetris. The classic puzzle game where you have to make lines out of blocks without filling up your board. It may be the most basic of puzzlers, but I still think it’s a classic. So, when I came into this week’s game, you could definitely tell I was skeptical. How can you make a sequel to a video game with as basic a style as Tetris? Well, let’s find out just how Nintendo did so with this week’s review of Tetris 2.
YEAR OF RELEASE: 1993
PUBLISHER: Nintendo
GENRE: Puzzle
The original Tetris game was the brainchild of a Russian computer engineer named Alexey Pajitnov. The simple game of taking blocks and lining them up proved to be a brilliant and addictive game idea. So addictive that it caught wildfire fast and found its way on computers and consoles worldwide. Even companies like Tengen tried to get the rights to the puzzler.
But the most well known handler of the Tetris license would be Nintendo. They would nab the official rights to the Tetris name in 1989, and would release the game for the NES and Game Boy, where both would be best sellers.
Nintendo wouldn’t stop there with the Tetris license, and would slap the Tetris name on practically every different puzzle idea they would have in the early 90’s. This included Tetris Attack, Tetris Blast, and the game we’re reviewing today, Tetris 2. Tetris 2 was released in 1993 for the NES and Game Boy, with a later port released for the SNES, and was a modest hit at best for the console. But does it live up to the legacy of the first Tetris?
COVER STORY
An okay cover at best. You get to see the blocks exploding, which does give you some idea as to what the big difference between this an the original Tetris is. Other than that though, it’s an okay eye catcher for fans of puzzle games, and especially Tetris fans.
GAMEPLAY
Tetris 2 is a 1-2 player puzzle game. The object of the game is to clear each board to advance to the next round, with the intent of gaining as high a score as possible. You move puzzle pieces with the D-Pad, and flip them around with the A and B buttons. You can also move the blocks faster to the bottom by holding the down button.
Each round has a set number of blocks at the bottom. You have to wipe them out by dropping more blocks on top of them. all you really need to eliminate a block at the bottom is two more tetris pieces of the same colour. You can eliminate them either by stacking them vertically or horizontally. So, you’re already guessing that this game strikes an eerie resemblance to a little puzzler known as Dr. Mario. And you’d be right.
However, there is one thing that sets this one apart from Dr. Mario, and that is bombs. At the bottom of the board are three glowing blocks. One for each of the tetris block colors. A yellow, a red, and a green one. if you can remove these from the board, they will take away all blocks of that colour from the board. So the real strategy of the game is to try and get rid of them first to aim for the fastest time of completion. A loss is occurred when you have too many blocks and they fill to the top, similar to most puzzle games.
At the options screen when you start a 1-player game, you can set either the speed that the blocks drop, the round you want to start on, or the music that accompanies you during gameplay. You can go as high as the 30th round in the game, where there are far more blocks to deal with, and the challenge gets pretty intense. There are 80 levels total.
Blocks are always in shapes of four, similar to that of the blocks in the original Tetris. Each are often multicoloured, or broken apart, so that you can place the right colour on top of the right block. Complete the level as fast as possible and you can earn bonus points. You have unlimited continues, but you will have to start fresh with your score when you lose.
Other than just the one player mode, there’s also a 2-player versus mode, as well as a 1-player versus. In the 1-player versus, you can actually set the difficulty of the A.I beforehand, and set the game up with as many blocks you want.
The object to versus mode is to eliminate all the blocks on the screen before the opponent. You will also see flashing blocks in this version as well. They won’t act as bombs this time, but can still do possible damage to the opponent by dropping the ceiling down lower and lower, making for a possible chance of them hitting it and losing the game in that manner. Best of three wins. So how you can stop your enemy all comes down to how strategic you can be.
GRAPHICS
The game has okay graphics. The board looks really nice, and while there’s really no personality to the blocks like the viruses in Dr. Mario, they still look pretty cool. They also spice up the game with cut scenes after completing every five rounds. It seems to tell the story of an orb crashing to a planet, and someone finding it. It seems odd, and I don’t know how well it fits to the game, but it’s nothing too distracting either.
MUSIC
Honestly, compared to the original Tetris, the music in Tetris 2 is extremely forgettable. There’s 3 songs you can pick in 1-player, and three different songs you can pick during versus. None of them have the ear worm quality that most puzzles games manage to have, and for the most part feel generic and lacking in a much needed oomph that really helps you think during gameplay. Nintendo has done far better soundtracks too, so that makes it even more of a shame.
TUNE OF THE GAME
While none of the songs in Tetris 2 are all that memorable, I’d say the only true standout is Music A from 1-Player mode. It has the best beat and feels like a puzzle game song.
OVERALL THOUGHTS
Tetris 2 is an okay puzzle game that is sadly overshadowed by far better puzzlers on the NES. Both the original Tetris and Dr. Mario are far superior in gameplay, sound, and fun. This game feels like an unnecessary sequel trying to cash in on the popularity that Tetris had amassed, and never coming anywhere near as close to hitting the popularity of it’s predecessor. Also, the SNES port released later on does feel a bit better in a lot of places including sound, gameplay, and graphics. In the end, I’d say this one just doesn’t come close. I’d say “block” this one out.
RATING: Thumbs Down