Thank you Digital Eclipse for sending us this game to review!

I remember when Tetris hit the scene when I was growing up. I first heard about it through my aunt, who played the MS-DOS version on her PC, though I never saw that version myself. But when the Game Boy hit the market, I had to have one, as I was a student with a lot of free time. In the era long before smartphones, the Game Boy was a great companion. And history has proven that Tetris was the absolutely perfect game to include with it. I have many fond memories playing multiplayer Tetris with a friend in high school, competing head-to-head with a link cable. We were the best of rivals at Tetris in those days. Very good times.

Just in time for Tetris' 40th anniversary, Digital Eclipse has released their latest playable documentary, Tetris Forever. My first exposure to this style of interactive documentary is the fantastic Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration. That release redefined what a classic games collection could be; more than just a list of old games in a collection, instead is walked us through each moment in time, making games playable along the way. Tetris Forever is also made by Digital Eclipse, and is also a playable documentary using a similar style. While there are far fewer games per piece of history in Tetris Forever compared to Atari 50, Tetris is one of the most important games ever - and Forever has a fascinating story to tell.

It all started with Alexey Pajitnov, the now-famous creator of Tetris. He was born in Moscow, during the height of the Soviet Union. As a child, he loved math and puzzles. As a teenager, he discovered a math puzzle at a local store, a set of pentomino toys. Pentominoes are shapes made from five square blocks. He spent many hours playing with them.

Later, after earning his Master's degree, he worked at an early Soviet computer lab. During his off hours, he had the idea of making a pentomino game, but found it too complex. But a tetromino, a piece made of four blocks, those are much simpler shapes. Alexey settled on tetrominos, then decided that rather than try to fit shapes into a small box like the pentomino puzzle he played with as a boy, rotating and stacking them into a well (the term he used for the vertical playing field) made for a much more enjoyable game.

The computers in the lab that Alexey had access to were extremely primitive by the standards of 1984 when he made the game. Graphics were not possible, so he made the game using all text characters; for example, a long bar would look like this: [][][][]. After building the playing field using other simple characters, Tetris was born. The Electronika 60 was an extremely weak computer, but certainly enough for the text-based Tetris Alexey made. A playable version of this Tetris, in its original Russian, can be played in Tetris Forever.

The story of Tetris continues, as Alexey met a 16-year-old student who was an incredible programmer for his age. Alexey asked him to make a version of Tetris for IBM PC, and that one was copied around to many computers in Eastern Europe (largely controlled by the Soviet Union during that time). A year or so later, Robert Stein stumbled upon Tetris, and sought to license it for the rest of the world. What would happen next would lead to incredible chaos for the rights over Tetris.

The Soviet Union didn't really have formal intellectual property rights laws, so a government organization Elektronorgtechnica, or Elorg, entered discussions, as it was decided they had a monopoly on the import and export of software. Eventually it was determined that Stein only had home computer rights to Tetris, but not after he sublicensed it out to many others, leading to eventual legal battles over rights to it.

The first sublicensee for the home console version in Japan, the Nintendo Famicom, was made through Henk Rogers' company, Bullet-Proof Software. While not Henk's first game, Tetris became the game that he was most famous for, selling over two million copies for the Japanese Famicom.

Before the Famicom release, there were several PC versions, including MS-DOS, Commodore 64, Apple II, and more. While not quite as polished as the console versions in key ways (like a lack of music), they were still important to the evolution and story of Tetris.

Henk made the most important risk of his life, and went to Moscow to secure the handheld rights on behalf of Nintendo. Henk did something that Elorg and the Russian government had never seen: a fair contract. Elorg ended up using that contract language for years after the Nintendo deal as a boilerplate for what a fair contract looked like. During this trip, Henk Rogers met Alexey Pajitnov, and they quickly became great friends. To this day, they are still close.

Thus, the Game Boy version of Tetris was born. Nintendo later secured home console rights worldwide, leading to the famous Nintendo vs. Tengen court battles over Tetris. The Nintendo NES version of Tetris also became a legend in its own right.

It's worth noting here that while many versions of Tetris are playable in this documentary, the Nintendo releases, Game Boy and NES, are not. Many (all?) of the Bullet-Proof Software versions are though, including the Famicom version. Up to this point, the MS-DOS versions, as well as the Apple II version of Tetris is playable. There are also a couple of older Bullet-Proof Software games that are playable, but not every game that's mentioned is.

After this, Tetris Forever takes the player through various sequels and spinoffs of Tetris. As of this writing, a free update was released that added the MS-DOS version of Welltris, a neat take on a 3D version of Tetris that allows the player to drop blocks down around four walls, while clearing up by filling the bottom center. It's a pretty interesting game. Other spinoffs include Hatris, which is playable, and Faces... Tris III, which is not.

Other sequels to Tetris are covered, like Tetris 2 and Bombliss. Most of the Bullet-Proof releases are playable, with most being Japanese versions, since BPS had the exclusive Japanese license. One game is Tetris Battle Gaiden, which is a unique title with anime characters as opponents. Sadly it is not translated at all; I wish they would have as it looks neat but it's hard to play as is. Other covered games in the history of Tetris are explained but not always playable. These include later MS-DOS and Windows versions, as well as other console releases like Sega and PlayStation. It is during the late 1990s that BPS creates The Tetris Company.

The final chapter of the documentary is all history with only one more playable game. This covers from the year 2000 to the present. BPS finally renames itself to Tetris, Inc. The final playable game is revealed, Tetris Time Warp, a game custom-made for this release by Digital Eclipse. It's a pretty solid version, where you can play a time warp mode where various eras of Tetris can interrupt your game. The eras are 1984 (Alexey's orignal), 1989 (Game Boy), and 1993 (Bombliss). Thankfully, there is a 1989 Marathon mode, which offers the music and graphics of the most iconic Game Boy version, without actually offering the classic game for rights reasons. It's a pretty good approximation, though. This and one Super Famicom game, Super Tetris 3, support up to four players. The rest are one or two.

Morally, this is an extremely clean title. Tetris itself is as morally pure as games can be. Some games do have bombs, but only blocks (and other bombs) blow up. The documentary videos may have a few minor curse words, like 'd*mn' and 'h*ll', but I'm not absolutely certain on this. There are definitely references to vodka, and how Russian people stereotypically enjoy that.

Tetris Forever is a fantastic homage and interactive documentary of the history of Tetris. If you are just here for the games, there are lots of excellent Tetris games out there. This certainly has some, but because of the way Nintendo doesn't license their games for other platforms, many of the most iconic aren't here. The collection of games has a majority of Japanese titles, since BPS made the Japanese Tetris games. Despite all of this, if you are a big fan of Tetris, then the documentary content makes Tetris Forever absolutely worth getting. As a piece of history, it's a wonderful look at the crazy and varied history of what Tetris was, and how it came to be. Digital Eclipse has also added one game since release, and has addressed feedback well; hopefully there is more to come!