Tetris (1989) (GBA)

Info About Tetris (1989) (GBA)

Whenever I boot up Tetris on my Game Boy Advance, I’m immediately hit with that familiar jingle and a rush of nostalgia. It’s amazing how those simple, falling blocks can suck you in for hours—one moment you’re clearing a line, the next you’re scrambling to dodge that one crooked piece you really need to slot in just right. The screen is crisp, the colors more vibrant than on the old brick Game Boy, and it still feels like the perfect on-the-go puzzle fix. No matter how busy life gets, carving out five minutes for a quick round of Tetris always manages to clear my head.

The gameplay itself hasn’t changed much from the 1989 original, and that’s exactly why it still works so well. You stack, you rotate, you hope for that long, skinny I-piece to drop when you need it most, and you chain together lines until you’re feverishly chasing the next level. On the GBA you’ve got a few tweaks—there’s a Marathon mode for serious line-count junkies, a Sprint mode if you’re racing against the clock, and even a link-cable option if you can find a friend who’s still holding onto their cable. Seeing two Game Boys face-to-face, both screens full of tumbling blocks, is somehow just as thrilling now as it was back in the day.

What really seals the deal is how well Tetris fits into little pockets of time. Waiting in line at the grocery store? Tetris. Commuting on the bus? Tetris. When the screen resets after a Game Over, it’s like a little reset button for your brain too. There’s a purity to it—no story, no characters, just pure spatial puzzle satisfaction. Decades later, it still feels fresh, challenging, and endlessly replayable, proof that sometimes the simplest ideas are the best ones.