Another old soldier making a come back is Tetris, only this time there has been a complete reworking of the game. If you've been living in a bunker for 20 years and don't know, Tetris is a shape game where falling four block segments have to be arranged to form complete lines. These disappear and you earn points.
Simple addictive stuff, it looks boring to watch but is monumentally addictive. Sweet as this version is, it may have missed the boat - by about three years.
Immerhin vier Jahre sind ins Land gezogen, seit Mirrorsoft dieses Spiel für den Amiga herausgebracht hat; vier Jahre, die uns unzählige PD-Clones und kommerzielle Nachahmer beschert haben. Jeder kennt Tetris, jeder hat Tetris - eine Neuauflauge braucht man etwa so dringend wie einen Systemabsturz!
Zumal das Teil außer einem Turniermodus und der Möglichkeit, sich das Leben mittels voreingestellter Reihen etwas schwerer zu machen, nichts Neues zu bieten hat. Ja, noch nicht mal mit einem Zwei-Spieler-Simultanmodus wie "Twintris" oder "Ditris" kann es aufwarten, dafür mit ein paar überflüssigen Grafikbeigaben: Als Hintergründe dienen nun Impressionen aus dem sowjetischen Alltagsleben wie Fabrikanlagen, Kosmonauten, etc...
Dazu gibt es russische Volksweisen als Sounduntermalung, allerdings sind die Stücke äußerst kurz ausgefallen, so daß bald wieder beruhigende Stille einkehrt.
Für diese Leichenfledderei fast 70 Märker zu verlangen ist schon ein besonders dreistes Kabinettstückchen, speziell hinsichtlich der Tatsache, daß sich die "verbesserte Version" ausschließlich per Tastatur steuern läßt! Nö, die ganze Angelegenheit stinkt meilenweit nach Geschäftemacherei - wäre da nicht unsere alte Freundschaft zu Alexey Pajitnovs Geniestreich, hätte die Bewertung wohl noch viel schlimmer ausfallen können... (C. Borgmeier)
Hey! Tetris! One of the best games in the world - the only problem being that the original Mirrorsoft version was completely and utterly useless, saved only by the unspoilable basic Tetris gameplay.
Now it's been done again by Infogrames - a perfect chance to put all the wrongs right and use the power of the machine to produce what could be, quite literally, one of the best games there's ever been. I mean, it's brilliant on the Game Boy, it's brilliant on the Spectrum, it's brilliant in the arcades, it's brilliant in the Public Domain, it's one of the simplest games invented - surely just the laws of probability forbid it being buggered-up twice? Don't they?
You know what's coming, don't you? It defies belief, it really does, but this Tetris is another disaster. What is it about Tetris that turns Amiga programmers into inept halfwits? Like I said, it's hard to mess up the basic Tetris gameplay, but the ridiculous keyboard layout on this version comes very close to it.
There's no joystick control option, so it's impossiblky awkward to ever really get to grips with, and the graphics and sound aren't anything to write home about (to put it mildly). You can change the speed and put obstacles on the screen to make things tougher, which would be good if the game was playable in the first place, but that's just about all it's got going for it. That and the pretty backdrops which you can change during the game I guess.
If you've got amazing powers of lateral concentration, you will be able to play Tetris with this program, but it's still only a tenth as good as some of the PD versions that cost a tenth of the price, and that alone makes it worthless. Don't even think about it.