The Soapbox features allow our individual writers and contributors to share their opinions on current topics and random things they’ve been chewing over. Today, Tim reflects on 35 years of Tetris on the Game Boy and how it taught a generation – several generations, in fact – how to play these newfangled vidya games…
Everyone has to start their gaming journey somewhere. For a generation, that gateway was Tetris for the Game Boy.
This emerging entry in the block-dropping puzzle game franchise was to Nintendo’s first handheld as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is to Switch, which is to say that if you owned a Game Boy, statistically you’d probably also own Tetris. This can be largely attributed to the fact that the game was a pack-in in North America and Europe until 1993, making it the first cartridge most people would put in their Game Boy when unboxing it.
Making Tetris the very first game for new players was a genius move by Nintendo. Video games – especially those that used what we now think of as a traditional controller layout – still were relatively new concepts in 1989. For context, the D-pad was only released on a Nintendo device seven years earlier with the Donkey Kong Game & Watch. Even as the NES made waves in the interim, the general public still came to grips with moving through two-dimensional digital spaces using a combination of directional pads and button presses.
Since Tetris requires nothing more than basic input to control, it was the perfect vessel to teach people of all ages how to play video games. That’s why it was the ideal game to guarantee that everyone owned from the start. This was especially important for a handheld for many kids who may have never touched a controller but would likely have chosen Mario over geometry if they were buying cartridges a la carte.
We often take for granted how difficult it is for someone with no gaming knowledge to understand the basics of gameplay.
I can vouch for its tutorial qualities, as Tetris for the Game Boy was my younger self’s first game (albeit in the mid-90s) and it got me started with the gaming know-how and motor functions I acquired. used today. . Let me walk you through the process of exactly how the game taught me and other players of that era how to game.
The Game Boy iteration’s controls predated the extensive feature set people know from later Tetris entries and boiled down to two types of input: moving tetrominoes around an invisible grid with the D-pad and pressing the ‘A ‘ and ‘B’ knobs to turn them 90° clockwise or counterclockwise. This meant that every button (except ‘Up’, which I’ll get into later) provided immediate and easily distinguishable feedback, with clear delineation between their functions. By comparison, Super Mario Land, the other major release of the Game Boy home screen, required more complex combinations of button presses to navigate. By assigning exactly one task to each button and not requiring combinations of multiple buttons, Tetris taught itself so well that there was no need to read the manual (which kids would likely skip).
At this point the hardest part is done. The player can play the game functionally, a foundation on which he will naturally build agility and speed through practice. However, they may not be quite ready for the more complex inputs and abstract game concepts of Super Mario Land.
We often take for granted how difficult it is for someone without gaming skills to understand the basics of gameplay. Speaking of my own experience as a kid with a Game Boy, I struggled to overcome King Totomesu’s fireballs in Super Mario Land because I couldn’t even reach him and needed a neighbor to help me get past the old man in Viridian City at the start of Pokémon Red and Blue (this same neighbor would then scare the hell out of me by summoning MissingNo). Yet Tetris has never confronted me with such obstacles, given the game’s roots in an early childhood toy that every child knows: building blocks.
By basing the gameplay on the real-life concept of stacking objects that children learn through toddler play, a general understanding of what’s happening on screen is ingrained. Perhaps most children will not immediately understand that they have to fill rows with blocks. although enough random tetromino dropping will inevitably lead to a line clear, probably even during the control learning process. The game makes a big fuss about this event by pausing the action, flashing the cleared lines, playing a sound effect, and increasing your score, cleared lines, and level. Every possible indicator is given to show that you have succeeded, even if it was initially by accident.
Once the connection between the player’s action and the victory status is made, the floodgates open for formulating optimal tile patterns, sliding them into tight spots, and recovering from mistakes. In addition, the inputs for moving and rotating tetromino come together in one fluid motion, paving the way for control schemes that demand more from the player. The rest is history; You’re a lifelong gamer now, boy.
would we be here without the skills that the 1989 entry gave to a generation of gamers, and how it launched Tetris’ popularity into the stratosphere?
It’s important to emphasize that Tetris for the Game Boy was so successful as a learning mechanic because of its simplicity compared to later titles. While the ability to hold a tetromino for deployment at an opportune moment greatly increased the strategic depth of the formula, its absence here worked in favor of providing a simpler framework that never ran the risk of overextending the player. overwhelm with mechanics. A feature like this could have been assigned to ‘Up’, but would have caused unnecessary confusion at a time when gaming was still new to most people. Likewise, it would probably have been more shocking to the layman if ‘Up’ caused a hard drop than if the button had no function.
These features definitely make for more attractive modern Tetris games. Even the most nostalgic gamers would be hard-pressed not to admit that games like Tetris Effect and Tetris 99 are superior to the franchise’s simpler times. However, these and other updated arcade classics can afford this complexity, as the language of game control is deeply ingrained in our culture; most children understand digital interfaces by the time they can hold a controller.
So new Tetris games meet the needs of their generation of players, just like Tetris for Game Boy did for ’80s and ’90s kids like me. But would we be here without the skills that the 1989 entry gave to a generation of gamers, and more broadly how it launched Tetris’ popularity into the stratosphere? It’s worth remembering this groundbreaking entry for the special place it holds in gaming history as we celebrate its 35th anniversary.
And hey, why not check it out in the Nintendo Switch Online Game Boy app, if only to hear that iconic banger of a theme?
Is there a specific Tetris game that played an important role in your life? Let us know in the comments.