Falling Block
Puzzle game foundation
A falling-block game drops pieces into a well and clears filled rows or matched groups. Tetris defined it, and the 1988-94 reviews here describe the rules, the Game Boy pack-in, and how Columns, Dr. Mario and Puyo Puyo varied them.
A falling-block game drops pieces one at a time into a well; the player steers and turns each piece as it descends, and filled rows or matched groups clear to make room. Tetris defined the form, and every magazine review of a successor measured it against Tetris.
Fast facts
- Defined by: Tetris, credited by Crash in 1988 to “Vagin Gerasimov and Alexi Paszitnov” [sic] — Alexey Pajitnov, “a 30-year-old Soviet researcher”, and Gerasimov, “an 18-year-old Moscow student”, in Computer Gaming World’s words.
- First Western releases held here: Mirrorsoft on the Spectrum and Commodore 64 (launched at the Which? Computer Show, January 1988); Spectrum HoloByte on MS-DOS and Commodore 64 in the US.
- The pack-in: Nintendo shipped Tetris with every Game Boy from the autumn of 1989.
- Named variations in the period press: Columns (Sega, 1990), Dr. Mario (Nintendo, 1990), Puyo Puyo (Compile, 1992).
The rules, as first described
Crash explained the game to Spectrum owners in March 1988:
blocks of differe[n]t shapes drop from the top of the screen into a box. Each block is made up of four small squares arranged to make a larger square, an L shape or a column. As the blocks fall they can be rotated or moved horizontally so that every space in the box is filled. Ten small squares make up one ho[r]izontal line in the box. When a line is completely without empty spaces, it scrolls down so that the process can be repeated.
The review notes the features that later games kept: a box “shows what shape of block will appear onscreen next. Thus strategic decisions can be taken on how to place the blocks leaving no gaps”; ten skill levels where “the higher the level, the [f]aster the blocks fall”; a piece “can be speeded up anytime, so if you’ve decided where to place a block you don’t have to wait for it!”; and the speed rising with success, so that “You can never ‘win’ Tetris”. Computer Gaming World said the same of the MS-DOS version two months later — “you can send it to the bottom of the frame for higher points” — and gave the verdict that stuck: “deceptively simple and insidiously addictive.” (CGW counted “six possible shapes”; there are seven.)
Where it came from
Crash presented Tetris as “the first Russian-designed computer game to be commercially available in the West”, crediting “Vagin Gerasimov and Alexi Paszitnov” [sic] and calling Gerasimov, “an 18-year-old student at Moscow University, a sort of Red Square Code Master”. Edge’s 1996 sketch of Pajitnov has him at “the Computer Centre of the Moscow Academy of Science”, interested in pentominoes, writing a computer version that “became massively popular throughout the Academy and, soon, in offices all over Moscow”, after which “Word spread to the West and it sparked the most desperate and protracted scramble for the rights to any game ever produced. Nintendo, perhaps inevitably, won the day.” Edge names no source for that account, and its “T and L Shapes” title is its own gloss.
The Game Boy
Nintendo Power announced in July 1989 that every Game Boy would ship with a Game Pak: “Better hold on to something! It’s Tetris!!!” Its description of the game runs to three sentences — “Turn, flip, and maneuver falling geometric shapes into solid patterns. Create a complete line and it will disappear earning you big points. Cinch, right? Uh-huh. Yeah. Sure.” — and it noted that an NES version was on its way “later this year”. By 1996 Edge could call it “the most popular Game boy title of all time” and credit it with the machine’s success; by 1994 it was writing that Tetris had “become one of the most played games of all time (mostly due to Nintendo and its Game Boy)”.
Variations
The reviews of the games that followed show how the form was varied:
- Match colours instead of filling rows. Columns (Sega, Mega Drive, 1990) drops “assorted blocks of three, the order of which can be changed as they fall down. When a minimum of three jewels of the same colour are placed together, horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, they disappear - and the jewels above fall down to fill the gaps.” Mean Machines filed it as “a game of the ‘classic simplicity’ type, such as Tetris and Klax.”
- Give the well a goal. Dr. Mario (Nintendo, 1990) is “a super puzzle game like Tetris” in which Mario is “out to wipe out a pesky virus colony”; two players can start “with a different number of viruses” to even the odds.
- Attack the other player. Puyo Puyo (Compile, Mega Drive, December 1992) has the player “control falling pairs of coloured blobs” and link groups of a colour; in two-player mode “a counter-shower of clear blobs rains down on the other player, thwarting any blob-dropping plans they might have had.” Edge judged it “a Tetris clone” closer to Columns, and noted Sega had renamed it Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine for the West.
By 1994 Edge was weighing a new falling-block game against “a million Tetris clones already out there”, many of them in “the shareware or public domain category that the Amiga and PC enjoy”.