Over the past few weeks I've acquired a bunch of new Tetris titles, growing my collection!
The Next Tetris puzzles has been a little of an obsession for a short while, when Kitaru told me about a puzzle with no solution online. The last puzzle, called Zipper (solution shown below), is the last puzzle of the Practice mode in TNT. It still has no solution for the PC version.
Zipper puzzle level in The Next Tetris practice mode.
We found out that the fixed piece sequence is actually different in the console versions from the PC version. This led me to collect additional versions to find some more differences.
Interestingly the Japanese version, as well as the budget re-release do not have any puzzles included. Those were left out until the DLX version was released. The North American versions do have puzzles, but not as many as the DLX version.
Apart from the puzzles there are a few other things I noticed, namely different intro videos, and developers. I thought it was weird when I saw AnimaTek (the development company that Alexey and Vladimir Pokhilko founded) on the intro screen.
Think that's a lot of The Next Tetris? These are new additions on top of the North American release and Pizza Hut demo disc I already own. I'm only missing the PC version, which I'm waiting to find a decently priced big box version, and an extremely rare version, for the Nuon. For some reason the Nuon version has the DLX intro, which uses the Tetris DLX logo, and is used nowhere else, nor does it have a puzzles mode.
Tetris 360. A game I never thought I'd buy, but when I saw a NIB for really cheap, I decided to buy it. I was excited to try it, but I have to say, it's probably one of the worst Tetris games to operate. You can rotate pieces, and drop pieces, nothing else. To move left and right, you have to first rotate the entire device and then drop (equivalent to moving left or right), then rotate back to drop down. This makes it so complicated to simply place pieces, and don't get me started on overhangs.
It does have a few redeeming qualities, such as being able to clear lines through the center of the screen when a piece spawns, which is a cool mechanic. But playing it is just too damn hard. I also never figured out if you could clear the leftmost and bottommost row at once. The easiest way would probably be an L-piece spin, into the corner. I just couldn't play the game for that long...
NES Tetris is a game I've owned in the past, but never boxed. Finally found a decent copy with a good price and picked it up. Now I just need a boxed Tengen Tetris :(
An early birthday present from my fiancée, Tetris 99 physical release. It unlocks the big block dlc, though not with a code, it requires the cartridge. It's kind of a bummer but as one of my favorite guideline games, I think it's great to own a physical version.
Lastly, I got this awesome Hard Drop keychain! It looks like it probably won't stand up to much wear and tear, so I'll keep it as a collectible for now.