Tetris

Well if you don't know this game it must be a very big rock you are living under. It's an Ok port, but there are so many better versions out there that this is very difficult to recommend. Extra point for the sound which is one of the best on the system.

It was an alright conversion, despite some inaccuracies, i.e. The blocks dropping all of a sudden when hitting down on joystick, instead of falling with an increasingly faster pace; also the graphics weren't the best, despite the decent fantasy background. It's got a cool and lenghty atmospheric SID tune by Beben. It misses the 2-players options. It was alright for the times, but it was soon to be outshined by many of its clones.

Great music can't save this humdrum port. In the better Tetris versions, each shape has its own colour, not just a random colour. Moving a piece down should accelerate its movement (a lot), not just instantly drop it on the bottom. And the action should gradually speed up. This version seems to go rather suddenly from too slow to impossibly fast.

Initial impressions are good enough, with an atmospheric title screen and a rocking SID tune, however, as soon as the gameplay starts, the flaws soon become apparent. Firstly, there's no two-player option. Secondly, an awkward method of placing the pieces down hinders precision. Thirdly, as soon as the blocks start falling faster, jerky movement and rotation make progress impossible. Avoid.

This is the one and only Tetris for me.

As with many others, C64 version sounds great but not very playable. My clone from 1985 (done at age 11) is far more playable.

I love Tetris. - Unfortunately this version is almost unplayable, because of the bad and slow controls.
Music is great though.

Tetris is pretty much Tetris anywhere you play it. However, the music for this one is awesome, and it's something I remembered years later with great fondness. So, if I was to play Tetris again, I would play this one just for the music.

The BEST version of ALL versions of ALL platforms! If I want to play Tetris I play the C64 version. Incredible music crowns all!

Not the best version of Tetris around but one of the best soundtracks I've heard in any game on any format.

Can't really see what some on here are on about. This played absolutely fine - so much so that I barely got on my C64 for about six months. I'd come home from school to find that my mum had loaded it up that morning, and had played for about 6 or 7 hours straight!

And the music - blimey! By far and away the best music on the C64. If you play this on the gameboy, it's almost a sort of bouncy, cartoon experience - on the C64 it was something brooding and cerebral, and that came partly due to the opening screen, but mostly because of the stunning, epic soundtrack. It's no hyperbole to say that it could easliy have accompanied a dark and claustrophobic hollywood film.

Honestly, even the Elektronica 60 version of tetris (first one ever) played better than this one. The original IBM PC version played much better than this one. The pre spectrum holobyte one.

BUT, it's music is totally awesome. Truly epic, and it really can put you in the zone.

Oooh the music... Its so good that I still listen to it periodically

Great version! Cool music and nice gfx. The Remember-crack also lets you save your score, and that also makes the game a lot more worthwhile. Did you know the game starts over after 255 lines?

This version rules. Ofcourse the fabulous soundtrack brings back great memories of passed game-time behind my C=64, but I like the game-challenge of Mirrorsofts Tetris as well. Begin at level 0 to enjoy the music's unique atmosphere, or at level 9 for sharpening your playing-skills.

Try the highest level to see how 'slow' the pieces move. I also agree that this version deserves a 10!
Definitely a CLASSIC! Furthermore the strange graphics are a real work of art. I think I will load Tetris up in my real Commie soon, hehe.

Best Soundtrack! , all time classic ..

AFAIR partly it consists of compiled BASIC - that's why the movement of the blocks looks so sluggish - but the music compensated this and more.

This version sucked. The pieces just look like one giant blob, instead of 4 individual blocks making each piece.

This may not be the most amazing Tetris version ever - in fact it's rather basic - but the gameplay is as addictive as ever, and the brilliant tune alone makes this an easy 10/10.

I love this tetris version.

Was never a huge Tetris fan, it always seemed a bit too much like hard work for my miniscule brain. It was never meant to be 'fun'. Bloody youngsters and their 'fun'.

Back when I were a lad... Etc

It may not be so funny as other Tetris conversions, but that music still echoes on my head. The tune was so hypnotic that made the game an absolute addiction. I played that game so many times that even today I can play Tetris better when the pieces rotate counter clockwise, like in the C64 version. I think my best score ever was 111 lines, but it was almost impossible to go beyond that.

@Lazy J: This is the ORIGINAL, OFFICIAL AND FIRST version on the Commie. Two player modes among other things "that made Tetris fun" came later, with trillions of clones. Here, one should regard the brilliant psychedelic soundtrack as a bonus, as the game would have well worked without. Anyone who played this for the first time got addicted within minutes. That's why we call it a CLASSIC.

After playing the Tengen version of Tetris on my Nintendo, I was jazzed up to see a Commodore version in the works... FINALLY. IMHO, whatever the NES did, the C64 could do better.

Instead, we got... This... THING. Sure, it might be Tetris, but brother it isn't TETRIS. It lacked everything that made Tetris fun. No two player mode. Blocks that looked as though they were churned out of a spritemaker in ten minutes (resulting in a multicolored mess at the bottom of the playfield). No new challenging modes.

A bad conversion of a brilliant arcade and console game. Sorry.

Nice version of tetris. Simple GFX, good FX/SND. Smooth CTRL.

The block movement should have been handled better, considering how well-suited Tetris is to the C64's 8x8 pixel character blocks. It feels like it's painting the blocks to a bitmap or something, making it a little too unresponsive when the game speeds up.
Still, the music is great, and the core playability of Tetris manages to shine on through. As this was the first version of Tetris I ever played, and I spent hours on it.

Good music, however why background is black and white and the blocks in color. So weird. This version is even good then the Amiga one. Pure nostalgic.

8 out of 10

Monty tetris is better, but this one is also good, only played for a long time

Loved the game & played it a lot. Music's brilliant. Only problem is the sore eyes you get after playing for 15 minutes because of the "smooth" scrolling

I really enjoyed this one. Very original at the time. There are better modern versions now, but Wally Beben's haunting soundtrack coupled with the simple but addictive gameplay has meant that Tetris has aged extremely well.

Atmosphere&music relation...

Never really a fan but my bro loved it!

It takes real talent to mess up a game as simple and elegant as Tetris, but Mirror Soft managed to find a way. I remember being disappointed with the overall feel of this game. It just didn't have the snap and responsiveness that Tetris needs. A disappointing version to be sure.

The music of this splendid game is evolutive ; that means it never stops but changes some tones each time it gets back to the beginning.

A very poor conversion indeed. Excellent music and nice background graphics but why on earth did they skimp on both the control system and foreground graphics? There are many many good versions of tetris for the commodore, and this one is not one of them.

This ain't bad but the gameboy version was better.

I don't see what the big deal is - Tetris is Tetris, and this version is as good as any other I've played. The only thing I don't really care for is the construction of the pieces. Any Tetris variant that uses solid shapes for the pieces rather than showing the blocks they're built from makes it difficult to place them with real accuracy. Or maybe I was just spoiled by other renditions of the game (in particular the Game Boy version). Still one of the most addictive games ever created, though, and the awesome SID score by itself makes this version worth a look. It may not have the flash of later Tetris games, but give this one a try anyway - you may be pleasantly surprised.

Great music. But this is a poor rendition of the game... Each type of piece should always be the same color, so you can see your next piece easily in peripheral. Also, if you hit down, it drops all the way and stops; on early levels, this means you have to wait for the piece to go down on its own if you need to slide it under something.

This is the Original Tetris-version for the C64! What can I say? Its Tetris, that's enough. A CLASSIC! Another strong part of the game was its music. For me one of the best compositions in C64-Sound. I have to rate it 10/10

For those who say this is a bad version of Tetris, because of its niggling faults - as far as I am concerned it was the first Tetris, and the faults you lived with as part of the game. This is the best Tetris that exists, and one of the greatest games ever.

Wasn't this the original Tetris game? I can't believe there are people slating this. It's flawless. It should be framed, or preserved for gamers 1000 years from now. I could play this game until my eyes fell out. I bought 2 PS2 games for my best friend for Christmas. I played them both (Manhunt and True Crime LA). I was bored within minutes. I never once got bored of this game, and I look forward to getting a working C64 again to play it some more. The music is beautiful. The perfect accompanyment.

I like tetris, but this version isn't too good. Dull.

I'm not a big puzzle games fan, nor am I a big Tetris fan, so maybe I shouldn't comment on this one. Still, I think that this version is icredibly boring and bad, the only redeeming feature being the good and lengthy soundtrack. There's no gameplay variety whatsoever, no objective in the game other than surviving as long as you can. Plus, the controls are considerably worse than in other versions. IMHO, 4/10.

I think Tetris is extremely overrated. The gameplay is totally boring.

Do you know, that the beautiful soundtrack has 27 minutes before it repeats? Absolutely amazing, the longest song I ever heard!

Great music, crap gameplay.

This original C-64 version was great at the time, and the epic musical score is still worth listening to. Playabilty-wise later versions are better, because the original drops the blocks instantly to the bottom when pressing the joystick down instead of dragging them down faster. The first Gameboy version is great!

Gameplay has its problems (when the game gathers speed, moving the pieces becomes incredibly hard because of badly executed block movement) but this is the most atmospheric of all Tetris versions out there. I still play it now and then with emulator.

TETRIS is best being played on a GAMEBOY!

From a gameplay standpoint, this is a very lousy version of tetris. You can't slide pieces after they touch, can't rotate pieces into gaps, can only drop instantly, and can only rotate one direction. Also, the difficulty stops increasing at level nine or so. However, the music ALONE makes up for it. The PC MS-DOS original is the best *official* version of tetris, because it DOES let you slide pieces after they hit, making the highest of levels playable. In my humble opinion, someone should make a version of Tetris for PC that uses the background graphics of the C64 version, two rotate buttons, slow drop AND insta-drop, block slide and rotate tricks, etc... And the plays an MP3 of this versions music as the only sound.

I actually bought this game for my C64 retail, and LOVED it, as soon as I decided to leave the music on. The tune has a real "epic" feel to it that really can put you in the zone like no other version. The music seems liek nothing special at first, but once you survive long enough for the music to really kick in then you are right in the zone and the music keeps you there. I was also impressed by the use of the fastloader and the lack of any sort of protection on the game that I could see.

Addictive game... With an incredible music... My favorite.. Even better than last ninja, a masterpiece of music in video game

The whole game is surrounded by some sort of mystisicm with the intro picture looking like grecian mythology and the soundtrack which by the way is god damn beautiful. Great game!

Who doesn't love Tetris? It's a great game for everyone; from aperson who's never played a video game, to video game experts. It greatly improves hand/eye coordination and reasoning/problem solving.
Not to mention, it is a great way to make hours melt away... 10/10

The graphics are made to be funtionable. The backgrounds are great. The music is of top class. Game-play is all about bricks, nothing more.

The music is very beautiful when remembering the fact it is done with a C64... Intro screen is neat, but otherwise the graphics are nothig to boast about... Surprisingly, I have never missed the 2-player game.. Worth trying at least.

Tetris ve never been better!!! Superb music etc... Great!!!

The first true version of tetris... Sure, it has its flaws... But this was a piece of history.

best music of any version I have ever seen as well.

overall... Second only to the gameboy version

Great music, nice graphics!

This is the best Tetris. The Musuc alone is worth the game. I played this for hours and the music still hits me. Absolutely great!!!

I rated it a 4 for the music alone. I never really liked Tetris that much. But the music in this version is some of the best music created anywhere, let alone the C64. My parents used to play it a lot, they loved it. Which was fine by me. I'd just sit and listen to the music whilst they played . Overall, it's Tetris, no more, no less, with killer graphics and music. Best Tetris version ever? I think so. So if you are a Tetris fan, then get this game.

Firstly, there was no 2 player option because, if I recall, we didn't think it needed one at the time. And the reviewers agreed with us in droves.

And BTW I'm speaking as the person from Mirorsoft who recruited the musician (Hagar) and the artist (SIT) from Compunet to do this conversion way back then. Soooo long ago (sigh!)

Wally Beben's half-hour long soundtrack using the Ariston player was (and, to a certain extent, still is) widely praised. It even made it into the much coveted Zzap! 64 music charts (Along with the Rob Hubbard and Martin Galway pieces that were always there)


Of course, as some have noted, the later public domain versions could be considered better... That's just called progress! But if it hadn't been for this, the original, there would BE no public domain versions...

It's still derves its place in the computer games hall of fame as an all-time classic.

Great sound track. But that's it, really. There's no 2-player option. Download a PD-clone of Tetris instead, you'll be much better off.

The music on the Amiga version is also excellent.

The music alone on this version of tetris is enough to make it the best Tetris available anywhere. One of my favourite tunes on the 64. I played this version of Tetris when it first came out before I had seen any other versions and in my opinion it hasn't been bettered. What is superior about the later versions? Gimmicky graphics? This version is pure and unspoiled.

Wow! Goooooooodddd game! And the music is beutiful!

Simplicity & perfection personified. The soundtrack is one of the best on the 64

Despite Tetris being one of the greatest computer-gaming concepts, this C64 conversion leaves a lot to be desired. There's no 2-player option, and no different levels. Nothing changes during play. Only the pieces fall faster and faster, until inevitably, you die. You 'd better download one of the infinitely superior public domain varations of Tetris...