Tetris Attack

The Good
Tetris Attack is a fun and addictive game with a Yoshi theme. It has a unique twist on the classic Tetris gameplay, where instead of blocks falling from the top of the screen, a complete row of random blocks appears from the bottom, causing all the current blocks to be pushed upward. The objective is to prevent the blocks from reaching the top of the screen by aligning 3 or more of the same colour to eliminate them. The game has 4 modes for single player: Endless, Time Trial, Stage Clear, Puzzle, and VS. In Endless mode, you aim to score as many points as possible by making combinations of blocks until they reach the top of the screen. Time Trial mode gives you a limited time to rack up points before moving on to the next level, and Stage Clear mode is a story mode with 5 levels per round, including bonus rounds. Puzzle mode challenges you to eliminate blocks in a certain number of moves, while Versus mode is a 2-player mode against the computer. There are also 2 2-player modes: Time Trial and VS. With so many options, Tetris Attack is a great game for improving your strategy and reflexes. Just be sure to take breaks to rest your eyes.

Best of all is the soundtrack which has inspired many modern remixes from musicians like Doffu and Overclocked.

The Bad
The game can get extremely challenging. I need frequent breaks to rest.

The Bottom Line
It resembles Tetris in some ways but provides a new puzzle gaming experience with an awesome soundtrack and beautiful graphics.

The Good
What a great game. It has a Yoshi theme complete with story and all. It is pretty basic but becomes complex through strategy. Rather than the original Tetris scenario where blocks fall from the top in random shapes, this game makes a complete row of random blocks appear from the bottom. This causes all the current blocks to be shoved upward. Eventually the blocks will hit the top of screen and then the round is over. You prevent this by eliminating blocks by aligning 3 or more of the same color. Tetris 2 makes things interesting with its flexibility. It has 4 modes for single player alone! Such as Endless, Time Trial, Stage clear, Puzzle and Vs. In the Endless mode you continually align 3 or more of each color block raising your score and the speed which new blocks appear from the bottom. You do this until your blocks hit the top. Time Trial mode you have a limited amount of time to rack up points before the next level begins. This mode is good for improving your combination making skills. Combinations are big points in this game. The only way to get the best Time Trial score is to do many combinations. Stage Clear mode is basically a story mode. You play five levels per round. There are over 6 rounds including bonus rounds. The objective of this mode is to essentially survive. During a round a flashing line will eventually appear, destroy all blocks above that line to win. Puzzle modes is one of my favorites. Basically there are blocks arranged on the screen that can be eliminated in a certain amount of moves. The moves are counted for and the maximum of moves allowed is displayed. This mode really beefs up your strategy. Versus mode is like 2 player but against a computer. It is split screen and interactive. When you do combos a huge block falls on top of the opponents side. These blocks can only be eliminated by connecting them to combinations. The bigger combo's you do, the bigger the block is that falls on the opponents stack. All this in just single player!! There are also two 2 player game modes to choose from, Time trial and VS. Now you can play these two familiar modes with a friend. This game is so much fun and addictive I strongly suggest forcing a break here and there, for your eyes sake.

The Bad
This game hurts my brain!

The Bottom Line
Awesome addition to the Tetris family. Really fun and challenging. The music is cool and the graphics look good.

The Good
I have stated before that Mario can be used on pretty much anything as some sort of quality-guarantee stamp, the beloved Italian plumber has been in so many different games and genres that context or consistency have long since been abandoned. It however seems that Tetris wasn't Mario's thing, so instead we have Yoshi and his buddies as the main theme of this game. The results are quite astounding, not only is the game packed with a cheerful atmosphere, but I would honestly say that I like this game better than the original Tetris because of this.

The music and sound-effects are the only components that weren't taken from the Mario or Yoshi franchise, though you'd be justified in thinking that they were. The brilliantly composed songs really fit with the aforementioned atmosphere this game has going and sound-effects were always a joy to hear. There are also some smaller parts that are new, such as a character who is practically a walking alarm-clock, but nothing really worth mentioning.

Now that we have the atmosphere down, the next step should be the gameplay. In Tetris Attack you pretty much play a variant on the classic Tetris, blocks rise up from the ground and you have to swap the positions of different blocks to form rows of three. Once you get a row of three or more, the blocks disappear and you get points, however, if the blocks reach the top of the screen, the game ends. This creates a very fast-paced puzzle game and especially in the versus-mode you'll have to think really fast and learn to think ten seconds ahead of what you're doing.

The versus-mode is probably the best part of this game, just like how it was with Dr. Mario. You and a friend both get your own screen and you need to make sure to keep your blocks low while also trying to sabotage the other player. Making combos will cause extra blocks to drop on the other players, which gives you even more incentive to think ahead of your moves.

Challenge mode is also pretty fun and has you going down a number of different worlds with increasingly difficult stages. It starts out pretty easy, allowing new players to learn how to play the game before been thrown into the faster levels. Difficulty is pretty good in this game overall, setting the game on an easy setting will have blocks appearing much slower and start you off pretty easily, while setting the game on a higher difficulty will have much faster scrolling and blocks may already be stacked up pretty high.

This game as a whole subscribes to the ancient "easy to learn, hard to master" philosophy. Almost anybody can pick the game up and play it fairly well on the first try, but to become really good at it, you will have to spend a lot of time with the game. If you go on Youtube and look this game, there is bound to be some videos of people showing off insanely fast moves and I have even seen one of them do it in real-life. It's pretty amazing to watch, to say the least.

The Bad
I think the game would have benefited if you had the option to swap blocks around vertically. One opinion I have always had about puzzles is that the player should always be able to finish them. I hate it when I am trying to solve a maze in a newspaper and I make a mistake, I can't go back and undo it or something like that. I have also never been a fan of games like patience. Tetris Attack also falls for this trap because sometimes there are just no moves to make and nothing the game gives you can help you make some, been able to vertically swap blocks would have solved this.

In the challenge mode you get passwords, which are an ass to write down and I always end up losing the notes. A save-system had been used in games before and after this one, so why can't we have it?

The Bottom Line
Tetris Attack is a game that is very dear to me, it been one of the first games I ever played on this system and a title I wanted to experience again for a very long time. There are some minor problems, I am not really cool with only swapping the blocks around horizontally and the lack of a save-system is kind of annoying, but overall I don't let that ruin the game for me. I play Tetris Attack when I am feeling a bit down, because this game is made to make people smile. From it's overly cheerful presentation to it's enjoyable core-gameplay mechanics, Tetris Attack is a very good puzzle-game.

If you have a Super Nintendo and consider yourself to be a collector, then this game would make for a wonderful addition. This title is also very good for the Mario fans and the casual gamers, even children like my little sister seem to really enjoy this. If you don't like puzzle games are simplistic games to begin with, then this is likely not you thing though. Just like how these games are incredibly hard to review for me.