Several December holidays ago (Christmas around these parts), I got one of the original Game Boys. That day, the next day, and most of the following days during that holiday break from school we constantly played one game and one game only. Tetris. Never mind the fact that it was the only game I’d own for the next few months. Now when I say ‘we’, I really do mean ‘we’. I played it, my mom played it, even the drunken hobos that showed up from time to time played it.
The game has reached a saturation point now, so I don’t think I really need to go into detail about it. Shapes fall from the sky and you have to artfully arrange them to form complete rows which disappear and shrink the stack. The game is super simple, and easy to pick up and play. But as you continue it gets tougher and tougher until you just can’t take any more.
Around the same time my uncle got a Game Boy, and Tetris, which he instantly fell in love with. He played it bit more than I did, and our link battles turned into fairly one-sided stomp-fests. (It’s OK, I got my revenge years later with Pokémon Puzzle League).
But I really would like to see more games like Tetris, which the industry is seeming to come back to. Games that are easy to learn, tough (or impossible) to master, and have a broad appeal. I simply can’t see this as being a bad thing.
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