Nintendo is adding a steady flow of classic games to its Switch Online platform, from the most obvious to the most obscure, but perhaps never something as significant as the NES version of Tetris. Why such a big deal? Because not only will this be the very first time the game has been made available on any platform since its original release, but it’s the version of Tetris when it comes to the thriving eSports scene.
The history of Tetris is such an extraordinary tale, so much so that 2023 saw the release of a hit movie based on the events. Its earliest years are a tangled confusion of rights and ownership disputes, culminating in its breakthrough Nintendo versions released for the NES and Game Boy in 1989. (The NES release itself is an astonishing tale, with Atari and Nintendo making rival versions, that somehow saw the vile, pension-stealing human stain, Robert Maxwell, trying to convince Mikhail Gorbachev to cancel Nintendo’s contract!)
Anyhow, that NES version has since never been re-released or made available on any of Nintendo’s subsequent e-stores. Come December 12, that’s going to change, as the game is added to the teetering pile of emulated classics in the Switch Online subscription service.
The NES version has become enormously popular thanks to its recent prominence in eSports, especially following 2023’s extraordinary series of broken world records, as players saw scores previously thought impossible, and the game’s killscreen was reached for the very first time. All of this is exquisitely documented in a YouTube documentary by Summoning Salt, which Carolyn Petit wrote about last year.
I swear, I’ve only ever been the most casual Tetris player (although, weirdly, I did once get to have a coffee with Alexey Pajitnov and Henk Rogers), and I found this two-hour doc utterly compelling from start to finish. There are so many twists and turns.
It’ll be fascinating to see how the Switch Online version fares. Presumably, the scene will judge it very closely, given how competitive players have more recently insisted on playing on an original NES cart for the best results. Or they’ll ignore it entirely because everything they’ve built is based on playing with the original NES controller and the nuances of drumming on its rear. Or, you know, regular people might just enjoy a nice game of one of the best versions of Tetris.
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