Tetris review

Tetris review Tetris isn't like The Legend Of Zelda or Super Mario Bros. If you've not played the original, you don't really need to download it to see how the series started. You see, despite all the extra options modern versions like Tetris 3DS throw at you, the main game has remained the same.

It may be more colourful but you're still rotating oddly-shaped blocks - or Tetriminos as the manual helpfully informs us - in order to form rows and rack your score up as they disappear. It's brilliant, one of the greatest puzzle game of all time, so why does recommending that you spend just £3.60 to download it from the eShop present us with a dilemma?

Because, other than a little feature that only Tetris nerds will care about, the original version of Tetris should probably only be downloaded for nostalgia purposes only.

It's got the two main modes that Tetris fans will spend the most time playing on whatever iteration they've got. One is classic Tetris which we've already mentioned while the other presents you with a stage where blocks are already piled up and you have to work quickly to clear rows. As you reach higher levels, the speed at which the blocks fall increases but other than that, the gameplay hasn't really changed over the years.

Except for one small detail. These days you can carry on rotating your blocks for a short while when they land but you can't do this in the original Game Boy version. As mentioned earlier, this will only be lapped up by purists, but then they might be annoyed that the original's two-player mode isn't playable in this Virtual Console version.

If the only version of Tetris available on the handheld was this year's Tetris 3DS, we'd have no problem recommending that you download the Game Boy original for less than a quarter of the price but you can download Tetris Party Live from the eShop for just 90p more and enjoy a colourful marathon mode and an online multiplayer mode.

So although it's still a wonderful puzzler that hasn't really dated, those who remember playing Tetris on the original Game Boy will enjoy it the most.