Those of you that have kept up with our coverage of Tetris 3DS will know that I'm a teeny bit of a Tetris nut, owning no less than five Tetris games across my three consoles at the moment. The news came in today, however, that it's soon to be six, as Tetris 3DS is launching this October - and seeing as it bares more than a passing resemblance to Tetris Party (a game so good I bought it twice; once on the DS, then on the Wii, and then as a present for someone - actually, that's kind of three times), it's almost guaranteed I won't be able to resist it.
The Game Boy version of Tetris, which helped catapult the game to fame in 1990.
For those of you that have missed out on the Russian phenomenon (if it's actually possible to have lived in the past 20 years without having come across Tetris), a variety of shapes fall from the top of the screen, and it's your job to arrange them into a line at the bottom of the screen, forming a complete row with no gaps - do it successfully, and the complete lines will disappear. The more lines you make disappear, the faster the shapes fall, making it harder and harder to fit them together - essentially, this is the Marathon mode that every Tetris game since the beginning of time has featured, and Tetris 3DS is no exception.
With over twenty different variations on the simple Tetris formula, it's sure to keep you busy for a fair while. There's Shadow Wide, where you need to arrange Tetris shapes to reveal a picture; Field Climber where you need to make a staircase of shapes to help a little man reach the top of the screen; and Co-op Tetris, for when you feel like you need a hand tackling Marathon mode. There's also Jigsaw, where you're arranging parts of a picture (and can even use your own pictures); Fit, where you need to fire shapes into holes in a matrix; and Capture, where you need to arrange shapes to cover up stars on both sides of a matrix.
Because it's a 3DS game, it'll also take full advantage of the extra features of the new console - letting you use AR cards to create a virtual Tetris block out of any surface, whether it be your cat, your boyfriend, or balanced over your morning cup of tea. It also makes use of SpotPass to send you new items for use in the brand-new Fever mode, where you need to try to clear as many lines as you can in a given time limit.
Fever mode also swaps to giving you an entire screen of the same shape to clear.
With Kirby Mass Attack on the DS coming out the week before, and Tetris 3DS launching on the 28th October, October is shaping up to be a very busy and expensive month for me... Make sure you keep checking back, as we're sure to get information on even more games that demand your money this October. For more information, why not check out our hands-on preview of Tetris 3DS from Gamescom.
