Tetris Forever review: an incomplete tribute to the best game ever

Tetris is Tetris. It’s basically perfect, and it always has been. This is abundantly clear when you load up the first playable game in the new interactive documentary and retro game compilation Tetris Forever: the original Tetris, as it was on the Electronika 60 computer that was already old-fashioned when Alexey Pajitnov wrote the game in Russia in 1984. The text is all in Cyrillic alphabet, the blocks are made out of brackets (the Electronika 60 had no graphics function at all), the only color is green, and the game lacks several design refinements, like the score multiplier for clearing multiple lines at once. And yet, as crude as it is, the game is as instantly and ferociously playable as it is intuitive, and as profoundly satisfying as any version of it since. It is a work of the purest genius.

The chance to sample this epochal piece of software for yourself is the greatest privilege granted by Tetris Forever, which collects just a small handful of the dozens, maybe hundreds, of iterations of Pajitnov’s game from the past four decades. The most powerful revelation contained in the collection is the instant, firsthand realization that almost everything that makes Tetris great was present in those early lines of code. After that, Tetris Forever developer Digital Eclipse has both everywhere and nowhere to go.

Tetris Forever is the latest in Digital Eclipse’s Gold Master Series, a format that bundles expertly emulated classic games with reams of multimedia information presented in an interactive timeline: filmed interviews, archive video, documentation, artwork, photography, and more. It’s officially the third entry in the series, after the single-title deep dive The Making of Karateka and the astonishingly comprehensive Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story (which is basically the real-life UFO 50), although the format was established in the developer’s excellent Atari 50.

Tetris’ convoluted publishing history is a double-edged sword for Digital Eclipse. It makes for a compelling story, but it also makes assembling a definitive compilation of playable versions of the game an impossible task. Meanwhile, the story told by the versions that are included is that of successive talented game designers, Pajitnov included, searching in vain for a way to improve on perfection.

The behind-the-scenes tale is the stuff of video game legend: A game conceived behind the Iron Curtain in the dying days of the Cold War becomes the subject of an intrigue-filled rights battle involving the USSR, Nintendo, shady British media barons, and a buccaneering entrepreneur called Henk Rogers. The story even has a happy ending, in which Rogers and Pajitnov form an unlikely bromance, consolidate the rights, and steward the game’s future while raking in cash for the rest of time.

It’s also a tale that’s been told many, many times before — in a classic work of business journalism, a sturdy BBC documentary, and a rather silly biopic, to name three. Still, the story’s familiarity shouldn’t take away from the material Digital Eclipse has assembled to tell it. There’s tons of interview time with Rogers and Pajitnov, as well as expert witness from a number of luminaries, including Tetris Effect designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi. Rogers spins a great yarn, and brings the big moments to life.

What really distinguishes Tetris Forever from those more conventional takes on the Tetris story is its dedication to tracking the evolution of the game itself through countless editions on every imaginable platform. But, while all the key variations of Tetris are mentioned (and a few more besides), the publishing rights are so broadly scattered through history that there is no way for Digital Eclipse — or even Rogers and Pajitnov’s rights holder, The Tetris Company, which clearly collaborated closely on this release — to include playable versions of many of them.

Nintendo, as fiercely protective of its back catalog titles as ever, has not turned over the rights for any of its own Tetris variants to the project. This means that arguably the two definitive versions of Tetris — the iconic Game Boy Tetris, which found the perfect match of form and function, and NES Tetris, which is still the gold standard in competitive Tetris play — are not included. (The Game Boy game is available on Nintendo Switch Online, and the NES game is due to be added to the service this winter.) Sega’s classic arcade version is out, as are Arika’s hardcore Tetris: The Grand Master games.

And those are just the essentials. It’s galling to have to pass over the brief mention of a fascinating curio like the Philips CD-i Tetris, with its spaced-out New Age vibes and impeccable 1992 screensaver aesthetic, without getting to see it in action, never mind play it. (For an authoritative and entertaining overview of some of the games omitted from Tetris Forever, I recommend the hour-long video by Digital Foundry’s John Linneman that tours nearly 30 versions of the game.) In recent years, two of the most vital and interesting reinventions of the game have emerged — Tetris 99 and Tetris Effect — but, as current commercial titles, those are out of scope for this collection, too.

What the game has instead is a collection composed mostly of the versions released by Rogers’ own Bullet Proof Software in Japan in the 1980s and ’90s: the 1988 Famicom release (not to be confused with Nintendo’s NES game), the Tetris 2 + BomBliss series, and the cute versus game Tetris Battle Gaiden. There are a couple of relevant diversions from the Bullet Proof catalog, like the Famicom Go game that endeared Rogers to then-Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi, and Pajitnov’s charming but rather weak-sauce follow-up Hatris.

There’s worthwhile stuff in here. Battle Gaiden is still one of the best multiplayer renditions of Tetris, and BomBliss (by EarthBound designer Akihiko Miura) is one of the more successful attempts to elaborate on the game, which it does by introducing bombs that can be set off by completing lines. But the best any of these designs can hope to do is to limit how much they dilute the purity of Tetris. BomBliss is very good — especially in its conundrum-like puzzle mode — but even a variation as accomplished as this feels like a regular, run-of-the-mill puzzle game that’s somehow tawdry and basic when placed next to the monolithic, flawless genius of its parent.

Digital Eclipse’s own contribution is a new game, Tetris Time Warp, which has a fun gimmick: Every time the player clears 10 lines, a time-warp block drops, sending the player back to an earlier era of Tetris: the Electronika 60 version, a cheeky facsimile of Game Boy Tetris, a 16-bit BomBliss, and so on. Completing a timed challenge within the time warp awards a big points bonus before returning you to the modern era. There’s a decent, enjoyably chaotic multiplayer version of Time Warp that supports up to four players, too.

Tetris definitely is forever. You can’t blame Digital Eclipse for wanting to memorialize it, or Rogers and Pajitnov for taking yet another victory lap, this time in interactive form. Studying and celebrating this game will always be worthwhile.

But Tetris is also too perfect to evolve over time, too big to contain in one compilation, and too pure to need explanation. Rotate, drop, click, repeat. It’s all there in the first five seconds. The rest is just lines to clear.

Tetris Forever was released Nov. 12 on Atari VCS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on Switch using a pre-release download code provided by Digital Eclipse. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.