For such a simple game, Tetris has a wild history. Developed in the mid-1980s by Alexey Pajitnov in the Soviet Union, Tetris’ global expansion involved a complex web of software copyright, clandestine meetings, handshake deals, and someone stretching a tourist visa to the very limits. It’s a story that inspired a feature film — but it might be best explored in Tetris Forever, the latest retro game collection from Digital Eclipse.
The studio has made a name for itself with its interactive documentary format. The idea is that, instead of just presenting a bunch of games and supplementary material and leaving it to players to sort through it, the collections put everything into a timeline you can explore in chronological order. This structure adds context to the games so that you have an understanding of why they’re important or interesting before you play them. The format has been used to tell the story of Atari’s first five decades and how Jordan Mechner developed Karateka.
It’s also ideally suited for the story of Tetris. Like its past collections, Digital Eclipse uses a combination of short documentary-style videos, photos, magazine and advertising scans, and the games themselves, and puts them on a timeline. In this case, you start out watching interviews with Pajitnov about his early life and how he first came up with and developed the concept for Tetris. Then you can play the very first version, made up of ASCII symbols, which was available on a Soviet computer called the Electronika 60.
From there, the story expands as various figures swoop in to take Tetris to the rest of the world, including Pajitnov’s lifelong friend Henk Rogers, who has his own fascinating backstory. As with all of its releases, Digital Eclipse expertly weaves these storylines together, showing players the importance of each beat in the history of Tetris. It’s augmented by a few important voices — including Tetris Effect designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi — who explain the game’s cultural impact.
What also makes it work is that Tetris Forever is just a great collection of Tetris games. It features 18 games, including some that were never widely released. Now, there are some notable omissions, namely the iconic original Game Boy version, but the collection gets around this in a few ways. First off, it includes an incredible array of variants that show the many ways Pajitnov and other designers tried to build on the original concept. (My personal favorite is Magicaliss, which came bundled with Super Tetris 3 and adds some clever puzzles and a very metal fantasy theme.) Then there’s an unofficial Game Boy version that looks, sounds, and plays like the original, even if it doesn’t have the actual Nintendo license.
There’s also a brand-new version of the game called Tetris Time Warp. It starts out like a slick, modern rendition of the game, but every so often will literally warp you back in time briefly, reskinning the game to look like one of the many older variants, and introducing some new challenge that you only have a few moments to complete. Then you’re whisked back to the present. Honestly, I’d buy Tetris Time Warp on its own. But as part of this collection, it’s just an added bonus on top of a great group of classic interpretations.
For all the ways it has penetrated pop culture, finding a good version of Tetris to play on modern hardware isn’t always simple. For that alone, Tetris Forever is worth the price of admission. But like the rest of Digital Eclipse’s work, it takes things a step further and shows how interactivity is the ideal way to dig into video game history.
Tetris Forever launches on November 12th on PC, Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox.