If anyone asks me which game I consider to be the best and most important of all time, I won’t give Super Mario Bros, Pong, or Ocarina of Time as answers. In my humble opinion, there’s no choice other than Tetris. Just like how Taron Egerton said in his cheesy delivery in the Tetris biopic, it is the perfect game. The perfect gameplay loop, so addictive that there are literal psychological effects named after it (it’s true, look it up). A game so good, so timeless, that my 71 year old dad knows how to play, and so do my 5 year old nieces, as well as anyone else in between. Tetris is timeless, it’s art, and it’s something that needs to be celebrated. And Tetris Forever is just that.

Henk and Alexey. Real life BFFs.

Digital Eclipse is back at it with the third installment of their Gold Master interactive documentary series. The Making of Karateka and Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story were great minidocs, but you can’t compare those two with the importance and history of Tetris as a whole. We’re talking about the most famous puzzle game of all time, the sole reason the Game Boy, and portable gaming as a whole, became such a juggernaut pillar in the industry. Just like Atari 50, Digital Eclipse’s first interactive documentary, Tetris Forever is wider in scope, features more titles, and a lot more documentary footage, telling one of the most interesting tales in the history of the gaming medium. To top it off, it features a brand new Tetris game as a bonus!

You can’t make a Tetris documentary without some of its most famous characters. No, I’m not talking about the actual tetrominoes (the puzzle pieces), even if they are still very much present. I’m talking about Alexey Pajitnov, the game’s creator, and Henk Rogers, the guy responsible for creating some of the most famous ports of Tetris, as well as the guy who convinced Nintendo to have the game included as a pack-in title for the Game Boy. Together, the two fellas still own The Tetris Company to this very day, which is run by Maya Rogers, Henk’s daughter. They also best friends to this very day.

The original Tetris, originally coded for an incredibly dated (even for the time) Soviet computer.

The life stories of both Henk and Alexey are told in an impressive level of detail. There’s tons of footage from their younger years, including videocam footage of the first time both lads went out on a stroll through Moscow’s Red Square, during Henk’s first visit to the country. As an added bonus, an emulated version of the Famicom version of Go is included, as Henk is actually a master in this Japanese board game, whatever that may mean. I tried playing it, but it’s all in Japanese; I couldn’t understand a damn thing, and gave up a few minutes later.

But this is not a documentary about Henk and Alexey. This is about Tetris, after all. Don’t worry, Tetris Forever doesn’t disappoint in this regard. The entire history of the game’s development is present, as well as explanations regarding its many ports and sequels. Other notable members of the industry are present during these clips, including Spectre HoloByte’s Gilman Louie, and Tetsuya Mizuguchi, the creator of Rez, Lumines… and the magnificent Tetris Effect.

Tetris Forever is full of old documents and curiosities.

There are tons of playable versions of Tetris included in Tetris Forever… as to be expected. The most important port of them all, the Game Boy, is obviously not included, as it’s owned by Nintendo. The sole fact they are mentioned throughout the documentary, with even pictures of Hiroshi Yamauchi, Mario, and Pokémon-related products being part of all ports, was already impressive enough, considering the company’s strict image right policies. Not having the Game Boy version included in Tetris Forever is disappointing, sure, but I surely wasn’t expecting for it to be present. I wasn’t expecting for the original version, the one developed on an old Soviet computer, to be fully playable in this collection… but it is.

The original version of Tetris was released in 1985 for an old Soviet computer called the Electronika 60. It was dated, even for Soviet standards; it did not feature graphics, with all imagery being displayed via letters, numbers and symbols. The original tetrominoes were crafted with bracket symbols, for instance. I do not know if the port included in this collection is running on an Electronika 60 emulator (if that even exists), or if it’s just a remake meant to resemble the original, but I can safely say it’s the most welcoming inclusion in Tetris Forever. Not the best, most certainly not the worst (the Famicom one takes the cake due to its poor controls), but easily the most historically relevant.

The Famicom port is terrible. You rotate by pressing down on the d-pad, and perform a forced drop with A.

Many other games are featured. The IBM PC port, the Apple II original, Tetris 2, Bombliss, Super Tetris, the list goes on. Not a single title from after the mid-90s was included, sadly enough. They are mentioned in the collection, however. I would have loved to see The New Tetris, V-Tetris or Tetris Worlds, but I can only imagine the legal hurdles which would have been necessary to secure their licensing rights.

Finally, there’s Tetris Time Warp, a Digital Eclipse original. I would have been satisfied with a mere modern, HD version of the classic formula (I still boot up Puyo Puyo Tetris just to play the normal Tetris mode every now and then), but this is more than that. It also features some neat time warp mechanics, occasionally transporting you back to 1985, 1989 (a royalty-free version of the Game Boy version), the SNES era, and much more, with specific challenges based on each port’s limitations. It’s fast, frantic, and, as to be expected from Tetris, absolutely addictive. The crown achievement of the documentary, located right at the end of it, as a well-deserved encore.

Tetris Time Warp, a Digital Eclipse original.

I doesn’t surprise me that Tetris Forever is so good. This is the fourth playable documentary by Digital Eclipse, and those guys take gaming history and preservation to an outstanding degree of love and care. The interviews are great (Alexey is just the most huggable uncle), the documents are neat, the easter eggs are a nice addition, and the sheer amount of versions of Tetris included in the package will please each and every single fan of the franchise. Sure, a few important ports are missing, but I can only put the blame on some faceless lawyers, not Digital Eclipse. Tetris is a juggernaut of a franchise, and Tetris Forever is a worthy love letter to its history and legacy. And without a doubt, Tetris is, indeed, forever.

Tetris Forever is available now on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, PC and Switch.

Reviewed on Switch.

A copy of Tetris Forever was provided by the publisher.