Year released: 1998 (Game Boy Color [also works in Game Boy, Game Boy Pocket, and Game Boy Advance], Super Game Boy enhanced [border])

Number of Players: 1-2

Help the blocks escape by cramming them onto the same horizontal line!

Graphics: If you use Game Boy Color or Game Boy Advance to play this, the colors will be on par with the NES version, if not better for the changing backgrounds. However, Game Boy, Game Boy Pocket, and Super Game Boy users will be stuck with a clone of the Tetris for Game Boy's graphics. Most of the stuff you'll be seeing is a blocks in some arrangement.

Play control: Left and right on the + control pad to move the block you are in control of left and right, down to make the block you are in control of fall faster, B to make the block you are in control of flip counter-clockwise, and A to make the block you are in control of flip clockwise. The block you are in control of is always falling at a speed (you can set the speed you start at, and then as you get more lines, the speed increases). Pulled off without a hitch.

Sound: The sounds are mostly normal sounds, but clearing lines just plain deserves its own adjective. You can make that adjective up when you play the game. You can choose any one of three tracks (or have no music) to play in the background as you drop the blocks, but the three present in Tetris DX don't have the same "oomph" as the original music.

Challenge: Get the blocks to fit so that you can go as long as possible while without touching the top of the screen (your stack of blocks reaches the top of the room = you lose). You can arrange blocks so that part of them fills up an entire line, at which point that line disappears (more lines disappearing simultaneously = more points). Then, for every ten lines you dissolve, your speed level will increase. In 40 lines mode (clear 40 lines), you can choose to make a certain portion of the screen unplayable (starting from the bottom going to the top all the way horizontally).

Gameplay: You can gather what it's like from above. Only thing I've left out is that each block is made up of four smaller blocks (the smaller blocks ALWAYS being the same size, no matter which bigger block you take). You can even use a Game Boy link cable to challenge your friend! I'm not sure, but I think that you will have to link up either two Game Boys, Game Boy Pockets, or Game Boy Colors to be able to use this mode. Or you can have a computer play against you in the very same manner. Periodically the computer will send entire lines of blocks to the bottom of your pile. However, so those lines don't clear, there's one block missing in them.

Bottom line: Sleepy afternoons will be woken up when Tetris starts to pour on the juice (as it were). Tetris is probably a great baby-sitter, too. Anyone can get engaged, being that it's so simple to start. Tetris DX tries to offer variety on the scale of Tetris Attack, but just can't pull it off.
I wonder if there are any Tetris fan communities or serious Tetris collectors.

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