Tetris Forever (Switch) review "Tetris Forever is a surprisingly effective celebration that can't help but foster a deeper love for all things Tetris."

There’s no good reason Tetris should work as well as it does, but it does. It’s the video game equivalent of popping bubbles on a sheet of bubble wrap. No sane person wants to stop when they’ve only just started, and it might be a long while before they’re ready to look up and face the world that keeps right on developing around them.

Tetris Forever, a video game compilation from Digital Eclipse that includes hours of documentary footage, doesn’t try to explain why people love Tetris so much. It is content to explore the history of the game, from its invention by a young man working in the Soviet Republic, to its explosion on the world stage as businessmen battled over intellectual property rights, to its enduring popularity in a time when hundreds of new games arrive each week. There’s a lot of ground to cover, and the package covers it very well.



Like many gamers my age, I first got my hands on Tetris because it came bundled with my Game Boy. My dad bought it for me and let me pick one other game, so I chose Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins. Although that other game is pretty great, I suspect I spent at least as much time—and burned through as many AA batteries—playing the simple little puzzle game that came with my system. Over the years that have followed, I’ve played a fair few variations of Tetris without fully appreciating just what a wondrous thing it is. Tetris Forever has given me new appreciation for the history of Tetris and its industry impact. I’m comfortable calling it a celebration well worth experiencing.

Some people who might encounter Tetris Forever will already be aware of the game’s colorful history. I knew only that it was created by Alexey Pajitnov, that Nintendo used a handheld version of the game to sell a lot of Game Boy units, that Tengen released an unauthorized version, and that over time Tetris and various clones have appeared just about anywhere a game can appear. They’re like Doom that way. I had no idea who Henk Rogers was, or how important he and a few other individuals were to the game’s success at a critical time in the industry’s history.

Tetris Forever fills in a lot of the gaps, which apparently were also explored by a movie I never saw. I won’t recap everything I learned here, because if you don’t already know the story, you should have it told to you by the people who lived it. Happily, Tetris Forever manages to do precisely that.



When you first load up the “game,” you can head right into its documentary side, or you can press a few buttons and arrive at a menu that lets you play the various Tetris games included as part of the compilation. There are 18 of them in all, and I’ll talk more about that selection in a moment. Before I started dropping blocks and clearing lines, I decided to explore its story. This is, I now believe, exactly the right way to go.

Tetris Forever presents information along a timeline, divided into five chapters. Each chapter features nodes placed along a horizontal line. Usually, there is a single node for a particular period of time. Sometimes, you can head down from the main node to find supplemental content. A lot of nodes and additional content consist of historical photos or galleries, or marketing materials. When the quality of the original material permits it, you can zoom in and pan across the image to view it in very good detail.

Video is the star of the show. Henk Rogers apparently took a lot of home video over the years, and he had the unusual foresight to capture some very interesting events on his camera. Then, he managed to hold onto that footage while moving around the world. Viewers even get to enjoy footage of a fateful visit to the Nintendo of America offices, which I found particularly interesting. We see footage of a trip to the Soviet Union. There’s also a lot of newer interview footage with both Henk Rogers and Alexey Pajitnov, made possible because both men are still very much involved with Tetris, Inc., the company that manages how Tetris is officially presented around the world this millennium.

Unfortunately, the compilation side of the game—which may be the reason some folks are tempted to buy it in the first place—doesn’t offer the same obvious value. I know this is sometimes due to factors outside the control of Digital Eclipse and anyone else who contributed to the project. Nintendo was hardly likely to say, “Sure, use our versions of Tetris in your retrospective compilation that you are releasing on every current platform.” That’s just not how Nintendo rolls. But I played the Switch version, and even it didn’t include the proper NES and Game Boy versions of Tetris that have been so vital to the game’s history.



There are other omissions. The popular Tengen version of game, which seems like it might have been easier to obtain—and which looms large in any exhaustive retrospective—is not included. Was it bad blood or were licensing fees too great? I can’t say. The text mentions Magical Tetris Challenge, a Nintendo 64 release I once owned that presents the classic game with a Disney skin. I understand why it didn’t make an appearance here, but the presence of Tetris Battle Gaiden essentially makes up for it. There is also no Welltris, which is sad because that one looked pretty interesting (albeit awkward) in the documentary footage that briefly showcased it. And Tetrisphere isn’t mentioned anywhere at all that I noticed, despite being thoroughly awesome and clearly owing a lot to the original Tetris. Finally, recent sensation Tetris Effect makes no appearance except in an extended video.

Instead of the games we don’t get, we do at least get some interesting offerings. There is a version of the game’s original build, which you can view as if playing on an old computer monitor (complete with green coloring, if you wish it). Tetris was originally made using brackets, since computers of the time weren’t great at graphical presentation. Most of us will never get any closer to playing the original game, so it’s wonderful to see it produced so faithfully here. And there are several versions of Hatris, and quite a few takes on Bombliss. These can’t help but feel like curiosities. I would rather have seen some of the other titles I mentioned make an appearance. But at least now I can see for myself the difference various sounds or control schemes and “rules” make to the core game of Tetris. It’s easier to develop a proper appreciation for how far the simple core game has come. Even though it plays horribly, I also appreciate having access to the Apple II version of Tetris, because the Apple II was the first computer hardware I recall ever touching.



The secondary star of the show is an all-new Tetris experience presented here for the first time and called Tetris Time Warp. It presents a “normal” version of Tetris, with the standard bells and whistles. You can rotate pieces for a brief window of time after they hit the ground of the well. You can increase their drop speed, or instantly drop pieces. Controls feel tight. Then a special piece falls, and when you clear lines that contain it, you warp back to a different period where other rules apply and you relinquish the ease of control, or you gain access to explosive chains, or even see modes reminiscent of the Game Boy release. This effect lasts for a period of 20 or 30 seconds, and then you’re back to the new hotness. It’s an interesting mechanic that mostly works very well (with support for as many as four players at once), although it does prevent the “zen” state some players associate with the best Tetris games. There also are “marathon” modes that forego the time warps, including one that pays homage to the Game Boy release. That will do in a pinch.

If you pick up Tetris Forever at full price, you’ll pay $34.99 USD. That gets you an interactive documentary that, like the game it explores, has no right being as interesting as it is. And you gain access to a bunch of versions of Tetris and some of the oddities that contributed to the Tetris revolution, except almost none of the titles I consider most essential are actually included (at least not in fully emulated form). Basically, the compilation contains nearly every version of Tetris except for the ones I might be most inclined to go out and buy. The end result should prove utterly fascinating to students of game history, but if all you want is a quick few rounds of Tetris and you simply can’t see yourself enjoying even an excellent documentary, consider looking elsewhere first.

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Staff review by Jason Venter (November 14, 2024) Jason Venter has been playing games for 30 years, since discovering the Apple IIe version of Mario Bros. in his elementary school days. Now he writes about them, here at HonestGamers and also at other sites that agree to pay him for his words.