Tetris is a puzzle game released for the NES in 1989, the same year the immensely popular Game Boy pack-in released and 4 years after the original DOS release by Alexey Pajitnov. In its first six months of release by 1990, Nintendo's NES version of Tetris had sales of 1.5 million copies totalling $52 million (equivalent to $128 million in 2023) - so, popular then. Ironically though, in the long-term the GameBoy and Atari versions were held up as the better versions available at the time, and the NES version is missing the arrangement of "Korobeiniki", present in the GameBoy version, which has become strongly associated with Tetris.

What do you mean do a write-up for Tetris? It’s bloody Tetris. Everyone knows Tet-alright, alright. We’ll humour you. Tetris is a puzzle game where you rotate falling shapes so that they perfectly tessellate together - with each complete line of blocks disappearing to create more space and generate score. The fabled and titular Tetris is achieved when four lines clear simultaneously, usually with a deftly-placed line piece. Very satisfying. But watch out, cause the better you do the faster it gets!

We will be playing the NES version which may be lacking many of the mod cons that Strugglers are accustomed to - its a back to basics approach where winning or losing is all on you. We will be playing A-Type, starting at Level 0. A-Type begins with an empty screen, and progresses in level (speed increase) every 10 line clears. After Level 10, the game speed only increases on levels 13, 16, 19, and 29 at which point the speed no longer increases. Level 29 is supposed to be impossible to beat and is known as the kill screen - will it kill you? We wonder.

Scoring:

Score upon Game Over > Level Reached > Time.

If your highest scoring attempt is still going by end of time, the score at exactly the 5hr mark will be taken.

1st) Lovenfloofen - Score: 239449 - Level: 14 - Time: 1:11:35
2nd) Kythias - Score: 224657 - Level: 14 - Time: 5:00:00
3rd) DMAC - Score: 176807 - Level: 17 - Time: 3:10:49
4th) RaefGall - Score: 149412 - Level: 11 - Time: 1:50:36
5th) Kylorian - Score: 139368 - Level: 12 - Time: 4:45:45
6th) Big Captain - Score: 118735 - Level: 12 - Time: 2:49:00
7th) Adriennes_Revenge - Score: 118655 - Level: 10 - Time: 1:26:24
8th) Garlips - Score: 111644 - Level: 12 - Time: 4:49:22
9th) NerdyFiona - Score: 110021 - Level: 9 - Time: 4:41:31
10th) Krameht - Score: 98089 - Level: 11 - Time: 1:49:58
11th) Fusha - Score: 97002 - Level: 11 - Time: 5:00:00
12th) Stephen's Rocket - Score: 96057 - Level: 13 - Time: 3:50:59
13th) Do_Odles - Score: 80949 - Level: 9 - Time: 4:22:06
14th) TomTheWizzard - Score: 75241 - Level: 8 - Time: 2:19:43
15th) shmumbler - Score: 73888 - Level: 10 - Time: 4:53:46
16th) Mr Matt Internet - Score: 55403 - Level: 9 - Time: 2:46:54
17th) Quantum_P1 - Score: 51750 - Level: 10 - Time: 5:00:00
18th) AshNacht - Score: 49608 - Level: 11 - Time: 4:31:56
19th) geckish - Score: 45475 - Level: 9 - Time: 4:10:39
20th) enbyzee - Score: 42881 - Level: 6 - Time: 1:32:30
21st) HexTree - Score: 34318 - Level: 6 - Time: 1:10:03
22nd) Stormfeather - Score: 33354 - Level: 9 - Time: 0:37:41
23rd) wugga - Score: 31395 - Level: 8 - Time: 2:59:59
24th) DPRoberts - Score: 30075 - Level: 8 - Time: 2:37:16