Tetris 64 is Tetris on the Nintendo 64. The main mode is basic Tetris. No bells or whistles, just a slideshow on in the background and acceptable background music. The thing is, everyone already had Tetris on the Game Boy, which was portable so much easier to just play a round and it had the amazing classic Tetris music.

There are a few options in the regular mode, such as one where rows of bricks come up from the bottom as time goes on, so it does a decent job, but it has a few more, one silly and one rather interesing.

The silly one is Giga Tetris, where you have to place a mixture of giant tetrominos (one “block” is the same as a regular 2×2 tetromino). The variation is not particularly good, and it doesn’t feel like you can do that much planning.

The interesting mode is unfortunately one that I can’t play as it requires an additional piece of the hardware. You know the infamous Wii Vitality Sensor that never released? And how people said that it could be used for horror games or something like Tetris? Well, the latter already happened on the N64, using the Bio Sensor that plugged into the N64 controller and clipped onto your ear to read your heartrate.

Despite how interesting this sounds, N64 Magazine stated that they didn’t notice much different in this mode. The Bio Sensor wasn’t included with the game, yet it was the only game it was compatible with.

Fun

Normal Tetris is, well, normal, and Giga Tetris uses enormous super-blocks to completely destroy one of the finest game concepts ever conceived. Why do games publishers still think they can already make Tetris better than it already is?

James Ashton, N64 Magazine #26. Review Score: 42%

Remake or remaster?

There are better Tetris games.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Tetris 64.