Tetris Forever review: A story 40 years in the making

We all know the story of Tetris, of how its origins in the Soviet Union led to a strange intersection of international politics, unstable business deals, and video games. But the story as it’s usually told tends to hit the major pieces without truly connecting everything that happened between the scramble over rights and the monolithic Game Boy launch in 1989. Tetris Forever, the third Gold Master entry from Digital Eclipse, aims to go back and fill in as much context as possible. This interactive documentary tells a complete story, one that’s almost as much about a friendship as it is a brand.

A documentary you can play like a game

This was my first experience diving into a Gold Master release, and I had no idea what to expect. Turns out there’s a reason this format has earned so much attention and praise. Tetris Forever takes what you’d expect from a Digital Eclipse collection, from a bundle of games to documents, video, ads, and other materials, and arranges them all in a mostly linear timeline. Added to the mix are new interviews and filmic flourishes that flavor the presentation similarly to a traditional documentary.

As you go through the timeline you’ll get the story of course, but you’ll also be prompted to play the games in the collection when they are contextually important. Even ones you might only play for a few minutes otherwise are placed deliberately on the timeline to build bridges in your mind between major story developments.

A bullet-proof legacy

You can just jump into the games by themselves of course, but just playing a bunch of Tetris variants isn’t the goal here, nor is it a comprehensive collection. You’ll learn about games you understandably can’t play, such as gimmicky arcade machines and stuff published by Sega and Nintendo. Also, you know, contemporary games you’re expected to seek out and purchase separately. But hey, if the interview footage with Tetsuya Mizuguchi can’t convince you to try Tetris Effect if you haven’t already, I don’t know what will.

What you can play are several releases from Henk Rogers’ Bullet-Proof Software, which serve as the backbone of Tetris Forever’s narrative. You get to see the buildup of key factors leading to Tetris’ current status as a company that controls its own licensing, such as BPS establishing itself in Japan, multiple crucial encounters with Nintendo, and Alexey Pajitnov building a career and finally getting compensation for his creation’s success.

Can we just go get ice cream instead?

As the documentary comes to a close (or you just skip to the games, and you really shouldn’t), you’re presented with Tetris Time Warp, a brand-new game from Digital Eclipse. It feels like a reward for sitting through the nerdy stuff, although the nerdy stuff is really the main draw. It’s a fine enough version of contemporary Tetris, with a gimmick that will interrupt the action and have you play small challenges using older versions of Tetris alongside Bombliss, a popular spinoff at its time. This is a fun idea, but kind of feels like walking into a gift shop after visiting a museum or aquarium. There’s some neat stuff, but it feels bombastic compared to the much more fulfilling experience beforehand.

As an aside, Tetris Time Warp feels a little undertuned compared to its peers. I’m decent at Tetris but far from a Grand Master cleaning up dubs in Tetris 99. Yet at one point I realized I had been playing the same round of Time Warp for over 45 minutes, having hit the maximum speed level and not really struggling to stay alive. I’d never felt a craving for the sweet release of death while playing Tetris before (you can see me pulling my own plug in the above screenshot), so in that way Time Warp was quite novel. The Marathon mode felt more on point in terms of challenge, but ultimately I’d rather play the older games in the collection or another modern title such as 99 or Tetris Effect.

Play Tetris Battle Gaiden, it rules

Speaking of the collection, it’s a lot cooler than it seems to go through a bunch of variations of the same game. For one thing, it’s awesome to simply have such easy access to the original version from Alexey Pajitnov. The random versions from Spectrum are what they are, but what really stood out to me was how ride or die with Tetris BPS was. The different Super Famicom titles are especially cool to mess around with, where you start to see experimentation with visuals and sound. Tetris Battle Gaiden, the two-player competitive version that has silly characters and special moves is one of my long-time favorites, but I had never realized it was part of that legacy keeping Tetris alive and healthy in the 90s.

If you’ve read the biographical comic book from Box Brown, watched YouTube documentaries or the recent movie and think you’ve seen the best parts of the Tetris story, turns out there was plenty of compelling ground left to cover. Tetris Forever tells a complete story, from the origins to the current Tetris Company, 40 years later. The new interview footage, filmic editing, curated game placement, and supplemental materials are arranged with tremendous skill and care. I can’t gush enough about how Tetris Forever takes the concept and structure of Gold Master and nails it, showing that weaving the “museum” content and gameplay together to tell a singular story leads to something that’s fun and intellectually gratifying at the same time.

Tetris Forever is available on November 12 for the Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series X|S, and Atari VCS. A Nintendo Switch code was provided by the publisher for this review.

Lucas White

Contributing Editor

Lucas plays a lot of videogames. Sometimes he enjoys one. His favorites include Dragon Quest, SaGa, and Mystery Dungeon. He's far too rattled with ADHD to care about world-building lore but will get lost for days in essays about themes and characters. Holds a journalism degree, which makes conversations about Oxford Commas awkward to say the least. Not a trophy hunter but platinumed Sifu out of sheer spite and got 100 percent in Rondo of Blood because it rules. You can find him on Twitter @HokutoNoLucas being curmudgeonly about Square Enix discourse and occasionally saying positive things about Konami.