Schierer Space

Tetris had some kind of anniversary^[1] a few weeks back and ever since hearing about this I’ve been itching to play the game. So I do what I usually do when I want to play a game but don’t want to actually, well, pay for it. I start searching the free^[2] and open-source communities for knock-offs of the game I want to play.

Here is my review of the Tetris clones I have tried.^[3] There are, of course, HUNDREDS of hits for Tetris on SourceForge alone, and I’m not playing them all.

• Original MSDOS Tetris: (3/5) How can I not include this? Provided on the internet by the man himself. Unfortunately, on a modern monitor the resolution is pretty microscopic making it almost unplayable. Still, 3 out of 5 for the original.
• Tetris++: (2/5) Most basic possible playable implementation of Tetris. A few annoyances: The colors on the blocks are a random selection of red, green and yellow. So subsequent blocks of the same shape may be different colors. Talk about bad human factors. Game has no menu or persistence, so the game is running when executed and exits when the well fills.
• Falling Block Game: (2/5) Kind of looks and plays like Tetris, but the falling blocks and the well are sort of 3-D perspectivized that makes lining up the blocks a pain. Graphics are clean and pretty but game play is sort-of sluggish. Music is reminiscent of the original.
• Stacker Blocks 3D: (2/5) Why do people think Tetris should look three dimensional? It’s unnecessary, distracting and makes the block really hard to line up. This implementation had many customizable features to help you line the blocks up on the bottom row… look… duh… if you need that many aids well maybe… MAYBE, there’s something wrong with your human interface. Game also takes forever to speed up, I’d dropped 3-4 hundred blocks and felt like the game hadn’t even changed speed.
• Tetris QUEEN: (3/5) In case you wanted a version of Tetris dedicated to a rock band: Here’s your chance. Game seems to have editable resolution, but it really just enlarges everything and the Queen album covers make for cluttered background. Not bad, but there are better. Also supports a wacky bomber mode where the blocks are laced with bombs while the game adds incomplete lines to the bottom of the well.
• Quadra: (3/5) This game has great graphics and a really nice game play feel and seems to support internet multiplayer. So why didn’t I score it higher? Unfortunately it has very gimmicky sound effects that change every level. Coo-koo calls and slide whistle sound effects have no place in Tetris. In addition, it was nearly DQ’d for a significant rules change from the original. In this version when a previously dropped piece is ‘broken’ by a line removal, the remaining sub-blocks, fall. So chain reactions may occur where newly liberated sub-blocks complete lines. This is rewarded with bonus points. Game also written by some sort of statistics freak since every action is seemingly counted and tallied. 3-block preview is also too much.
• Bloxrun: (3/5) Supports two-player hot-seat games, graphics are classic with mildly textured blocks. The game didn’t seem to speed up quite fast enough so it seemed like I was playing forever. Also, it doesn’t seem to support key auto-repeat so you end up pushing left-left-left-left-left-left instead of leeeeeeeeeft.
• Ultimate Tetris: (3/5) The game play itself is smooth and responsive with clean graphics. The problem is it requires the player to navigate through multiple highly cluttered option screens to actually play a game. The actual game launch screen has so many multiplayer game type options I think it would take a major in Ultimate Tetris to sort them all out. Unless you want to set up a new professional Tetris league, I’d avoid this one. On the other hand if you never want to play quite the same game twice, maybe this is your thing.
• Snip: (4/5) Clean interface, appropriate sounds. Very responsive, with the ability to adjust the timing of how quickly things move and rotate. Classic game play. Unfortunately it seems to have originated as an art project and the vast majority of the game is in black and white. Only when lines are removed from the board is there a flash of color. I need a bit more contrast between the pieces for rapid recognition of whether that’s an ‘S’ or a ‘Z’, an ‘L’ or a ‘J’. The sound files are basic WAVs and all the graphics seem to be driven by fully editable BMP files. So fully customizable. I edited up a colored version of the blocks and the playability increases significantly.
  (5/5 with my full color blocks… save the file below into your snip/graphics folder in place of the original stones.bmp file.) If I’m bored I may make up a ‘classic look’ tile set to really make this even more like the original. I suppose at that point I should figure out how to submit my patch to the repository on sourceforge.
  
• Untharis: (Woah!) Honorable mention to strangest implementation of Tetris into a large more flexible game. This ‘game’ allows players to simultaneously play adaptations of Tetris, Pong, Rampart, Breakout, Worms, Snake, Tron, and something sort-of Qix like all on the same board. Right. Same time… same board. Competitively. Serious game mash-up. Multiplayer is pretty much essential for an actual game, but even single player it boggles the mind.
• Tetris Friends: (Online) You can always get a quick fix at any number of online sites that want you to register and “join their community”. This is just one example. This one allows you to play pretty much any game as a guest.

References:

• Open Source Games for Windows
• 25 Years of Tetris: Time Waster Retrospective
• SourceForge search for Tetris.

1. 25th [↩]
2. as in beer [↩]
3. This list does not include games that are somewhat like, but not actually the 4-square constructed objects falling down the screen game. [↩]

This entry was posted on Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 4:34 pm and is filed under Computer / Tech, Found on the web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.