‘Tetris Forever’ Is an Playable History Lesson, But It’s Incomplete

Since its creation 40 years ago, Tetris has remained a universal force in gaming. Perpetually iterated and reimagined, it’s considered to be the most ported game of all time — releasing in some form or another on more platforms than pretty much any other title. But with so many different versions of Tetris in the wild, the series’ history can be spotty. 

That’s where Digital Eclipse’s Tetris Forever comes in. Part interactive documentary, part gaming collection, it’s a comprehensive journey through the history of the world’s greatest puzzle game, but it has some glaring omissions.

Upon booting up the game, players are met with a dramatic fade-in of a quote from Henk Rogers, managing director of The Tetris Company, that reads: “Tetris is the one game that’s still going to be around when all the other games are gone.” It’s not necessarily hyperbole, but it’s a good indication of how serious Forever takes the subject matter.

A Virtual Museum Tour

Beyond the title screen is a chapter selection, inviting users to sit back and enjoy a trip down memory lane. Conversely, you can skip the history lesson and jump straight into playing one of 18 versions of Tetris from throughout the years, but by doing so, you’re missing out on context that actually elevates each individual game experience.

In a similar vein to Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration (2022) and The Making of Karateka (2023), developer Digital Eclipse presents Tetris in a hybrid documentary form that plays like an interactive museum activation at home. It’s an ambitious package that details 40 years of history, cataloging everything from the minute breakthroughs made by original designer Alexey Pajitnov to the corporate espionage and licensing wars that came with the introduction of entrepreneur Henk Rogers, much of which was depicted in Hollywood fashion in the 2023 product biopic.

The presentation of Tetris Forever is laid out as a timeline with multiple branching segueways that further expand on certain eras, releases, and noteworthy events. The primary experience consists of progressing, beat by beat, reading factoids and watching short documentary videos, photography, and physical media scans until arriving at the corresponding game. From here, many of the games are playable with a simple button press. 

This virtual museum can be skipped through at your own leisure — chapters can be played in any order — and at no point does Forever try to force you to learn the entire history of Tetris so you can access the games. Considering the selection, however, some of the titles benefit greatly from knowing their history before you press play.

An Incomplete History

But as impressive as the total number of titles included is, clocking in at 18 with Tetris Time Warp topping off the selection as a brand new entry, there’s dozens of games missing. The easiest explanation for skipped entries is licensing issues, but even games that are prominently displayed as essential parts of Tetris’ history appear in static mentions only. Imagine delving into a playable history of Tetris and not being able to play the 1989 Game Boy version? The one the official Tetris film is based on? The omissions make the whole enterprise seem incomplete, telling only half of the game’s story as a result.

Most of the entries you will find in the collection are from the Nintendo Entertainment System and Famicom consoles, and the latest entry before 2024’s Tetris Time Warp, Super Bombliss DX is from 1999. In short, there’s a 25-year gap of playable titles in Forever, including essential releases such as Tetris DS (2006) and Tetris Effect (2018) — the latter considered by many to be the greatest Tetris game ever.

The visual timeline does mention them, of course, and there are supporting documentary videos for some, such as a charming conversation with developer Tetsuya Mizuguchi explaining how he got in touch with Pajitnov and detailing some of the creative challenges of making Tetris Effect. But it feels counterintuitive to have to close the full application and boot Tetris Effect separately after learning its history; it goes against the very intention of the larger experience. 

If you’re looking to play many of the games mentioned that appear on Nintendo platforms, you’re out of luck — the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U eshops were shut down in March 2023, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Many of the games showcased here as footnotes only aren’t playable anywhere, making the digital museum somewhat dour in the face of how poorly video game preservation has been for the industry.

Fun, tangible reactions

But for what is on display, there’s an endearing quality to following the timeline instead of jumping straight into your personal favorites or the most modern versions. The recreation of the original 1984 Tetris on an Electronika 60 is quite striking — the monochrome presentation, the eerie lack of music, and the difference in objective (you aren’t tasked to clear lines but successfully place Tetrimino shapes instead) makes for a substantial contrast to the larger legacy. These are the moments in which Tetris Forever shines, effectively sending players back in time to 1:1 representations of classic games in a very tangible way. 

Each game also has a selection of visual options, which vary depending on the entry. Most include the ability to expand the screen size of, say, a Game Boy release to either full or widescreen, or use filters to mimic the feeling of playing on a CRT display, which helps sell the immersion. There’s also instruction manuals to read, as well as tutorials written by Digital Eclipse, the latter being especially useful for entries like Tetris Battle Gaiden (1993), which was originally only available in Japan.

Older Tetris games are, understandably, quite hard to get attached to even with subtle tweaks and visual improvements available. After finishing the documentary timeline, I already had a select few in mind to return to, but many remain quirky oddities that will only be booted up to show interested friends. The somewhat disposable nature of much of the collection is offset by its sole new addition to the canon, Tetris Time Warp, which ties the whole history lesson into one cohesive payoff.

A 40-year remix

The primary mechanic of Time Warp adds special pieces at random which, once cleared, immediately transport players into a different Tetris game from another era. Each era becomes its own time attack mode where completing a goal will boost your score before being sent back to the present. Finishing the sub-game with time to spare, will send players to a later generation. The tonal whiplash is an exhilarating ride, and can be difficult as the gameplay and rules are constantly shifting to remain true to the specific version of the game you’re in at any given time.

Time Warp also features local multiplayer, which can be trippy as players compete while occupying different eras at the same time, as well as different solo marathon modes with the goal of clearing 150 lines as fast as possible. One of them includes a rendition of the original Tetris for the Game Boy, which also serves as one of the eras you can warp to, which is something of a make good, considering its omission of the actual game in the collection.

At its core, Tetris Forever is a mixed bag of nice-to-haves, while also missing some key content. The inclusion of Tetris Warp, with its fun twist on the series’ formula feels like a nice love letter to the franchise, and could have served as its own release. The virtual museum aspect works best when there’s actual games to play in between the educational portions, but they don’t always elegantly align with all of the gaps. 

For those interested, the story shown in Forever depicts a much more grounded lesson than the one provided by 2023’s Tetris movie, which could be good or bad, depending on whether the player is excited by the realities of game development. But toward the end of the timeline, I was left wanting more.

The care of Digital Eclipse for preservation is tangible, and the efforts are worth celebrating, especially as the presence of physical media continues to become scarcer and companies continue to shut down digital stores. In the case of Tetris Forever, the end result is a reverence that indirectly serves as a living commentary on how licensing and rights can compromise even the most prominent video game legacies in existence. 

Perhaps its biggest achievement is acting as a prescient warning of the possibility that, unless a bigger preservation effort is made, Tetris won’t be around as long as its creators assume.