Continuing my journey into the world of puzzle games, I set my eyes upon the wonderful shapes and vibrant colours of Tetris DS.

Tetris was a revelation in the early 90’s but we all know that story, so instead of re-treading old ground, let’s jump straight into 2006 – The year that I got blown away by those beautifully shaped blocks.

I’d found a love for puzzle games on DS and was starting to delve fairly deep into the genre but there had been one big anomaly. Like being a fan of platformers yet having never played Mario or loving open world games but never stepping foot in Liberty City, I was living the ultimate sin – calling myself a fan of puzzle games having never played Tetris. Just how did I come to miss one of the best selling games of all time, available on possibly the most platforms imaginable? Well I was at that awkward stage where the Tetris revolution had ended and hadn’t quite re-emerged in this new-age era of mass puzzle games on the go via mobile. I was the lost block generation.

Alas, all that was about to change thanks to a visit to the dentist. Yes, as the cool teenager I was, I had braces to match my dashing ginger hair and rotund build, but if braces brought me any joy at all, it was the fact that I had my appointments in school time and for some bizarre reason was given copious amounts of treats from my mum when I went. Skipping out of school around 1pm right before my P.E. lesson (it’s almost as though I’d planned it), we were on our way to Shrewsbury for a mouth drilling. We got there a good half hour early though so got to look around some shops. Usually I’d get a magazine or something but I happened to be looking at Tetris DS, a full price new release no less, and mum was all ‘shall I get that for you?”. Gasping for air, I let out a meek ‘god yes’ and in that moment had bought what would go on to be my favourite puzzle title of all time – And the best version of it, no less. Wiiware, Gameboy, iPhones, PC’s – Eat your heart out. The DS is where it’s at.

The normal mode of Tetris DS plays just like any other version of Tetris, you start with a blank screen, get given a block and have to place it on the floor. Keep placing blocks, clearing a line if you manage to place an entire row with no gaps and continue until the blocks fall faster, your blood pressure builds to dangerous levels and your stack of blocks gets too high resulting in your untimely death.

As far as visuals and audio go, Tetris DS is miles ahead of any other version of Tetris, then or now. Every few years Tetris gets bought by another publisher, and when Nintendo had their hands on it once again in the DS era, they went to town on nostalgia. Playing up the most famous Gameboy version of the game, they themed each level with classic Nintendo IP and awesome remixed tracks from their respective games.

The Tetris action takes place on the bottom screen whilst the top screen plays host to the levels theme. For example, as you clear blocks in the first level, the higher your score climbs, the further into Level 1-1 of Super Mario Bros Mario travels on the top screen, jumping and bopping his way to victory.

The themes in this game really bring it to life and so much effort went into making this game a nostalgia driven heaven, it’s like if Nintendo obsessed Smash Bros. director Masahiro Sakurai was given the reigns to Tetris.

As with any Tetris game, this title had a bunch of exclusive alternate modes, but again, as with most other entries, you know they’re not worth mentioning – they’re the Bounty and Twix you find in Celebrations, you just have to wonder why they even bother putting them in there.

The best new feature in Tetris DS was that you could jump online and play against a random person across the globe. The gameplay was still the same, but if you lined up 2 rows or more, you’d send a load of blocks onto your opponents screen too, hopefully messing up their perfectly lined up shapes and causing them to lose that bit quicker. An awesome feature of the DS is that you could see exactly what you opponent was doing, as your game was on the bottom screen and your foe was stacking blocks on the top screen.

It can be easy to forget just how far we’ve come in recent years, as we grab our phones and check Facebook in ad-breaks without a second thought, but even as recently as 10 years ago our internet browsing habits were confined to PC monitors. The DS was a wonder in that regard then, and when the suckers on Mario Kart couldn’t handle my snaking skills I took to Tetris.

Anyway, this title had me hooked for years after its release, but it definitely peaked in the last year of school. Puzzle games often set you into a kind of trance, Tetris especially, and there’s nothing more satisfying or relaxing than slotting together different shapes into perfect lines and blasting them away. It’s almost therapeutic, no, it is therapeutic.

I had a lot on my mind the one day and fired up Tetris DS marathon mode, a mode which has you play endlessly until you fail. Usually I’d manage about 20 minutes which was probably a good or above average length considering the pace at which those blocks come down. This day though, I got in the zone, started slotting those blocks and was in a trance. Blocks were falling at such speed I probably had about a second or less to slot them into place, all my thoughts disappeared and I was glued to just the shapes on the screen. I’m not joking when I say that when I got the Game Over screen, the biggest score I’d ever seen was plastered on the top corner and I saw that two hours had gone by. I don’t know how I did it to this day and I’ve certainly never been able to repeat it.

That’s the moment I truly fell in love with Tetris, though I admit I had to stop myself playing for a while after that as I could see shapes when I closed my eyes. I did this a hell of a lot that year, and those shapes are burned into my mind forever. Whenever I see unofficial Tetris images or rip-offs on TV I scoff, I mean, a T block with 4 squares down? PAH.

It turns out I wasn’t completely insane in finding it therapeutic back then, though. In 2009, The Oxford University found that playing Tetris after traumatic events can help reduce flashbacks.

The research, which was conducted at the department of psychiatry at the University of Oxford, suggests using Tetris as a "cognitive vaccine" against flashbacks from traumatic events. It's published on the open-source science research Public Library of Science (PLoS) website.

Here's how they set out their recommendations:

The rationale for a 'cognitive vaccine' approach is as follows: Trauma flashbacks are sensory-perceptual, visuospatial mental images. Visuospatial cognitive tasks selectively compete for resources required to generate mental images. Thus, a visuospatial computer game (e.g. "Tetris") will interfere with flashbacks. Visuospatial tasks post-trauma, performed within the time window for memory consolidation, will reduce subsequent flashbacks. We predicted that playing "Tetris" half an hour after viewing trauma would reduce flashback frequency over 1-week.

- The Guardian

So when I wasn’t pestering the school therapist, I knew I could just hide in my bedroom and play Tetris all day. Well, I didn’t at the time as this study wasn’t carried out until 3 years later, but damn that would have made for a great excuse back then.

It’s crazy to think really that such a simple game provided me with so much fun, I can’t imagine the amount of hours I put into this title, but it’s by far my most played puzzle game of all time, and is probably up their with any genre I’ve ever played.

Whilst I have pretty much played it to death, I still love to play a game of Tetris to this day on whatever console it may appear, but nothing will beat the spinning sprites, up beat remixes and awesome themes seen in this title.

It’s crazy how some shaped blocks can bring such happiness, but they are as iconic in my mind now as Pac-man or Donkey Kong. If you’re into puzzle games then I really can’t suggest this enough – The best version of the greatest puzzle game of all time.