Tetris Walkthrough

Tetris is a classic game developed by Alexey Pajitnov, a Russian computer engineer. It was released in June of 1984, and goes down in history as the first piece of entertainment software to be exported from the Soviet Union to the United States. It was published first for the Commodore 64 by Spectrum Holobyte, but has since been ported to numerous systems including arcade machines, home consoles of numerous generations, home computers, and mobile devices. Tetris has also inspired numerous offshoots such as Tetris Attack, Tetric Party, and Tetris Friends. This Flash version of Tetris captures the gameplay of the classic game, but unfortunately lacks its trademark music (and instrumentation of the Russian folk song, "Korobeiniki", known as "Music A" in the Gameboy version of the game).

The objective of Tetris is to arrange falling pieces consisting of four blocks in such a way that they form horizontal rows ten blocks across. When a full row is formed,t he row of blocks will disappear and your score will increase. Forming multiple rows at once (up to four rows high) earns more points. When enough rows have been formed, you will advance to the next level. If you fail to clear rows and the blocks pass the top of the screen, then you will lose the game.

Not only is Tetris a renowned classic game, it is also good exercise for the brain. Studies by Dr. Richard Haier have shown that brain activity becomes more efficient during play. This puzzle game requires of visual-spatial cognition to properly rotate and move pieces into place to form rows. Planning ahead is also important, and the game displays the next piece in queue to help players to accomplish this task.

This Flash port is an excellent way to get a quick fix of Tetris. Other than its lack of the classic game's trademark music, it is still a spot-on representation of the original. You can always hum the music or loop it on YouTube, right?