Tetris DS - Review

The two most important rules in Tetris are:

1. The speed at which tetrominoes shower from the sky should only ever increase. The player should have absolutely no control over the rate at which they fall.

2. The blocks should be sticky. They should rigidly lock themselves into place the moment that their southern most side so much as brushes against another block.

Tetris DS overlooks both these rules, and so – despite what the box says – cannot be considered a proper version of Tetris.

In this version, a block can land against your existing stack, and you can continue to rotate it. Most ridiculously, you can continue to move the piece horizontally over blocks that are higher placed to the left or right. This allows the player to buy precious extra seconds before the next block falls, and thus utterly breaks the game.

Earlier versions of Tetris, like the definitive Tetris DX for the Gameboy Color, knew not to be so forgiving. Getting to level 9+ was truly terrifying, because your game could easily be ruined in seconds should you let your stack get more than half-way up the screen.

You must reject this over-priced imitation of the real thing.