Tetris

There are hundreds of falling-block games, but the version competitive players still argue about is NES Tetris, Nintendo's 1989 cartridge. It is the game behind the Classic Tetris World Championship, the one where teenagers made headlines for reaching levels nobody thought possible. This page runs that original NES game through an emulator, so the speed curve, the scoring, the music and every quirk are exactly as they were. (If you want a simpler, modern-style version, Good Old Tetris is also on the site.)

Two Ways to Play

• A-Type is the endless marathon. Clear lines for points, and every ten lines the level goes up, the pieces change color and fall faster. The game ends when the stack reaches the top. This is the mode high scores are made in.
• B-Type is a sprint with a twist. You start with random garbage blocks at the bottom of the well and need to clear 25 lines. The speed stays fixed, and you choose how high the garbage starts. It is ideal practice for digging out of a messy board.

On the menu you also pick your starting level from 0 to 9. Holding the A button while you confirm adds ten more, letting you start as high as 19 if you want speed from the very first piece. And you choose your soundtrack: the NES version swapped the famous Game Boy tune for classical pieces, including Tchaikovsky's Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and Bizet's Carmen overture.

Controls

The emulator maps the NES controller to your keyboard. The arrow keys act as the D-pad: left and right slide the piece, down soft-drops it. The two NES face buttons, A and B, rotate clockwise and counter-clockwise (by default they sit on keys like Z and X; the emulator's control menu shows and changes the mapping). Enter is Start, which also pauses. There is no hard drop and no hold box — this is 1989, which explains much of the tension: once a piece is placed badly, you live with it.

How Scoring Works

Points are based on how many lines you clear at once, multiplied by your level plus one. A single line is worth 40, a double 100, a triple 300, and a Tetris — four lines with one I-piece — is worth 1200. The gap is huge: four singles at level 0 give 160 points, one Tetris gives 1200. That is why good players build a tall, flat stack with one empty column on the side and wait for the long bar. Soft-dropping adds a point per row, but it is a small bonus next to clearing lines.

The Speed Curve

Pieces speed up every level until level 10, then again at 13, 16, 19 and 29. Level 19 is where things get serious, and level 29 is the famous "kill screen", where pieces fall one row every frame and moving them all the way across the board becomes almost impossible with normal tapping. Competitive players use special techniques to keep going, but for most of us, reaching the level-19 speed and surviving a few lines there is already a proud moment.

Tips for Better Runs

• Keep the stack flat. Bumpy surfaces leave holes, and holes are what end games.
• Leave one column empty, usually on the right edge, and save it for I-pieces to score Tetrises.
• Watch the next-piece preview next to the well and plan one move ahead.
• The side panel counts how many of each piece you have had. A long drought of I-pieces happens; have a backup plan instead of stacking higher and higher.
• Use B-Type to practice clearing messy boards without the speed pressure.

A Game That Never Stopped Growing

For decades people thought level 29 was the real end of NES Tetris. Then new techniques like hypertapping and rolling let players move pieces faster than the original designers imagined, and in 2023 a young player finally pushed the game so far that it crashed. You do not need any of that to have fun, but it is nice to know the same cartridge on your screen is still being explored by the best players in the world.

Ending Rewards

Score high enough in A-Type and the game shows a little animation of a rocket launching in front of St. Basil's Cathedral, getting bigger the better you did. Those endings are a classic NES reward, and chasing the biggest rocket is a great reason for one more game.

For more puzzle games built on falling or fitting blocks, try Block Blast or Kids Block Puzzle, and for a quick two-player brain teaser, Tic Tac Toe.