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‘Tetris 99’ will get an offline multiplayer mode later this year
Nintendo has been slowly expanding how and where you can play Tetris 99. In February, the company released the battle royale game as an online exclusive for Switch. A few months later, Nintendo offered downloadable content, so users could play the game offline. While you could still battle against opponents, offline you were forced to duke it out against bots. Now, it looks like that's going to change. Nintendo appears to be planning an offline multiplayer mode.
'Tetris Royale' brings massive battles to phones worldwide
Just a few weeks after its 35th birthday, Tetris is getting a new look. A Tetris battle royale game is coming to mobile. N3TWORK and The Tetris Company Inc. announced that they've partnered to develop Tetris games built for mobile devices worldwide -- excluding China.
Sega's Genesis Mini lineup will include 'Tetris'
The Genesis Mini's lineup keeps growing, and this time in an unusual direction. The retro console (known as the Mega Drive Mini in some countries) will carry two more games, the side-scrolling Darius and... Tetris. Yes, the game that's virtually synonymous with the Game Boy (and has been absent in Nintendo's roster) will be playable on the reborn Sega machine. It's an odd choice, but you might not complain if you're looking for a quick, nostalgic Tetris fix.
'Tetris' turns 35 this week. It's still the best puzzle game of all time.
At Engadget, we spend every day looking at how technology will shape the future. But it's also important to look back at how far we've come. That's what This Week in Tech History does. Join us every weekend for a recap of historical tech news, anniversaries and advances from the recent and not-so-recent past. This week, we're wishing Tetris a happy 35th birthday!
Nintendo will let you play 'Tetris 99' offline for $10
Releasing Tetris 99 as a free-to-play Switch game was a canny move by Nintendo, as the popular online-only title motivated users to get a Switch Online membership. Now, Nintendo is introducing a paid component with the new $10 Big Block DLC. You get two new modes: "CPU Battle" lets you play 98 virtual opponents offline, while "Marathon" is just classic line-clearing action. Both are available offline, meaning you'll no longer need Switch Online to play it.
'Tetris 99' hands-on: The battle royale game for everyone else
Last night, Nintendo dropped an awful lot of things to get excited about if you're a Switch owner. Alongside a Zelda remake, a new game from the makers of Bayonetta, and Super Mario Maker 2, it resurrected Tetris (bigger than Mario, right?) for 2019. The company (and the Tetris experts at Arika) have made it battle royale-style.
'Tetris' is now a battle royale game exclusive to Nintendo Switch
Forget Apex Legends, there's another new free-to-play battle royale game now: Tetris 99. This version of the classic puzzle game is launching today on Nintendo Switch with 99 players trying to outlast each other. Players can attack each other with "garbage" that pushes you closer to the top of the screen and out of the game. You rack up "KO" badges for each opponent you knock out, and Nintendo promises there will be online events soon. Announced today during the Nintendo Direct stream, it's available exclusively for Nintendo Switch Online members. Update: Check out our hands-on impressions here.
‘Tetris Effect’ is therapy for distracted, anxious minds
Can a video game be more than just a game? Can it train you to focus? To disassociate yourself from traumatic memories and heal your mind? Can it transcend your personal experience and bridge a geopolitical divide? These aren't just ridiculous claims from a marketer's fever dream -- one video game has done all of this before, reaching hundreds of millions of players: Tetris. And it's back again, just when the world needs it most.
PS4 owners can try ‘Tetris Effect’ for free on November 1st
At E3 2018, Sony announced Tetris Effect, a trippy new take on the perennial classic. Developed by Enhance, it's set to be released on November 9th for PlayStation 4 and PSVR. If you're looking to try before you buy, Enhance announced today that a free demo of the game will be available for a limited time beginning on November 1st. The demo will be available through November 5th via the PlayStation Store.
'Tetris Effect' drops a color bomb on your PS4 November 9th
Back at E3, Sony revealed the first trailer for Tetris Effect, a modern spin on the classic puzzle game. Sure, at its core, it's the same game we've been playing for decades. But you've never seen Tetris look like this before. You won't have to wait too much longer to play it either, as developer Enhance announced Tetris Effect will arrive on PS4 and PSVR November 9th.
'Tetris Effect' is PlayStation's trippy take on the classic puzzle game
If you've been looking for something to whet your appetite after finishing Rez Infinite on PSVR, Sony's got you covered. Tetris Effect is a trippy new project from rhythm game legend Tetsuya Mizuguchi, best known for Rez, Child of Eden and Space Channel 5. There's a lot going on in the short reveal trailer beow, but the game's website has a few descriptions that should help make sense of everything. The game will surround you with "fantastic, fully three-dimensional worlds that react and evolve based on how you play. Music, backgrounds, sounds, special effects -- everything, down to the Tetris pieces themselves, pulse, dance, shimmer and explode in perfect sync with how you're playing."
Watch this streamer accidentally break a 'Tetris' world record
As the old saying goes, if at first you don't succeed, try again. Or, if you're Jonas Neubauer (AKA NubbinsGoody), break a different world record instead. The NES Tetris maestro was trying to break the world record for speed-clearing 100 lines in the classic 80s game and was doing alright until he made a minor error (a basically negligible whoopsie for most players, at that) and lost his focus. "That was a fast 300,000" he says casually, before checking his Twitch comments and then realising that yeah, it was a fast 300,000. Fast enough to earn him the world record for hitting the score in under two minutes, in fact. And understandably, he's pretty excited. And the 100 lines record? He broke it the next day.
'Tetris' the movie is going to be a sci-fi trilogy
Empire has interviewed the man tasked with bringing a decades-old falling block game to the big screen -- and he says it's going to be a three-parter. Larry Kasanoff says that "because the story we conceived is so big. This isn't us splitting the last one of our eight movies in two to wring blood out of the stone. It's just a big story." Big story. Huge.
Live-action 'Tetris' film secures $80 million
The fact that filmmakers have their hearts set on bringing a movie based on Tetris to live isn't news. The fact that Threshold Entertainment has secured $80 million in funding for a hypothetical Tetris movie is. That's a lot of money, and a lot of questions, like "Why Tetris?"
Taking gaming into the real world
Playing video games and enjoying the outdoors don't have to be mutually exclusive. Various creative minds have come up with ways to take gaming into real-world environments. Why chill at the crib when you could be out driving a real-life Mario Kart or letting hadoukens fly at Burning Man? We've highlighted just a few of these pioneering projects this week, so head to the gallery for a look at the gaming experiences you've missed by staying home.
Gaming hall of fame inducts 'Pong,' 'Tetris' and other classics
The results are in. After a selection process that lasted nearly four months, the newly created World Video Game Hall of Fame has announced its first class inductees. Doom, Pac-Man, Pong, Super Mario Bros., Tetris and World of Warcraft were chosen by The National Museum of Play for 2015, narrowing down the choices from a list of 15 finalists. So which games, which you helped vote for, were left out? That includes other classics like Space Invaders, Sonic the Hedgehog, The Legend of Zelda and The Sims -- although the museum did say these will likely be part of next year's nominee class.
Math explains why beating 'Tetris' is basically impossible
You're never going to beat Tetris. Sorry. You might be asking why I'm so pessimistic and even though that's perfectly natural, PBS' Game/Show will back me up here. While the seven multicolored falling bricks (officially called "tetrominoes") all fit together pretty nicely, they only occupy a space that's eight tiles wide when fully combined. Coupled with the size of the playing space -- the "well," as it's called, is ten tiles wide -- there's always going to be room for screw-ups that are out of your control. There's a ton of math, studies of probability and statistics to explain it all, too. As host Jamin Warren tells it (citing a research paper from 1996), failure is due in no small part to how the "bag" randomly generates pieces that're dropping.
How do you promote a new banknote? With 'Tetris,' of course
If there's one thing that kids love more than Tetris, it's learning about the security features built into new banknotes. Thankfully, the folks at the European Central Bank have devised a way to combine both of those pursuits in the form of Tetris New 20 Euro. The browser-based title is a variation on the block-dropping classic that sees you learn security facts about the new 20 Euro note as a reward for finishing a level. For instance, did you know that the portrait of Europa (pictured) becomes a transparent hologram if you hold the note up to the light? Put it this way: with trivia this good, no-one will be able to resist you hitting on them at the club this weekend.
Games of a Lifetime: Jessica's picks
After more than ten years devoted to video games and the people who make them, Joystiq is closing its doors. We won't be reporting on the best games of 2015, so join us for one last hurrah as the Joystiq family reveals their Games of a Lifetime. Tetris Grandma can beat you at Tetris. This was a foundation of my childhood and an irrefutable truth as I was growing up. Grandma would sit in her office, in front of a bulky 90s-era television, NES plugged in, and she would dominate level after level of rapidly falling tetrominos. My cousins and I would try to do the same and always end up supremely behind her high scores, but always ready to try just one more round. To this day, I'm still ready. Here's to you, Grandma, my own Original Gamer, and here's to Tetris, my Original Game.
North American Tetris player achieves Grand Master rank
Tetris wizard and Twitch streamer KevinDDR has reached the notoriously difficult-to-achieve Grand Master ranking in Arika's Tetris: The Grand Master 3, becoming the first player in North America to receive the honor. An archive of the event as it happened is available here. To be considered for the Grand Master Promotional Exam, players must achieve a "GM"-quality rank during the majority of their last several Master mode playthroughs. GM rank demands that players fulfill many difficult requirements and reach the game's maximum drop speed level by clearing several dozen lines in under seven minutes. During the Promotional Exam, a Grand Master in training must complete one final challenge: playing a minute's worth of Tetris atop a credit scroll with pieces that turn invisible when dropped. Grand Master rank has previously been achieved by only five players in Japan, and KevinDDR is the first Tetris devotee in the United States to join the elite. His skills were showcased during the Awesome Games Done Quick 2015 charity marathon earlier this year.
