Nintendo continues to add tons of classic games to its Switch Online platform, from the most obvious to the most hidden, but it may never be something as significant as the NES version Tetris. Why such a massive deal? Because not only will this be the first time the game will be released on the platform everyone platform since its original release, but it is the version Tetris when it comes to the blossoming esports scene.
History Tetris it’s such an extraordinary story, so much so that In 2023, a hit movie based on these events appeared in cinema screens. Its earliest years were a convoluted confusion of rights and ownership disputes, culminating in the groundbreaking Nintendo versions released for the NES and Game Boy in 1989. (The NES release itself is an astonishing tale in which Atari and Nintendo created competing versions that somehow way she noticed the vile, pension-stealing human blob, Robert Maxwelltrying to convince Mikhail Gorbachev to cancel the Nintendo contract!)
In any case, this NES version was never re-released or made available on any of the subsequent Nintendo e-stores. Come December 12, that will change when the game is added to the teetering pile of emulated classics on the Switch Online subscription service.
The NES version has become extremely popular thanks to its recent prominence in esports, especially after a remarkable string of broken world records in 2023, where players achieved results previously considered impossible and the game achieved a kill screen for the first time. This is all brilliantly documented in the Summoning Salt YouTube documentary which: Carolyn Petit wrote about last year.
I swear I’ve ever been the most casual I’ve ever been Tetris player (although, oddly enough, I once managed to have coffee with Alexei Pajitnov and Henk Rogers) and I found this two-hour documentary completely absorbing from start to finish. There they are So many twists and turns.
It will be fascinating to see how the Switch Online version performs. The scene will likely judge this in great detail, considering how recently competitive gamers have been insisting on playing on the original NES cart to get the best results. Or they’ll ignore it completely because everything they’ve built is based on playing with the original NES controller and the nuances of drumming on the back of it. Or, you know, regular people can just enjoy a fun game of one of the best versions Tetris.
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