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Filed under: Time-Wasters

25 Years of Tetris: Time Waster Retrospective


Today is a historic day. Not only is it the 65th anniversary of D-Day (and my grandfather, a US Naval Captain was there), It is the 25th anniversary of the greatest puzzle game of all time: Tetris. In honor of Alexey Pajitnov's awesome creation, I've tracked down some awesome ways to play Tetris on your PC or Mac -- for free.

Tetris 1989 (www.tetrisfriends.com) -- Although Tetris might have debuted in June of 1984, most of us were first introduced to this addictive puzzler in 1989 on a green and yellow tinged screen. As the pack-in game with the original Game Boy, Tetris was catapulted to a whole new audience of fans. Although we had Tetris (and Dr. Mario) for our NES, it wasn't until I got a Game Boy for Christmas in 1991 (third grade, baby!) that I really, really became Tetris-obsessed. You can revisit that nostalgia on your web browser in this Flash-based port, provided by Tetrisfriends.com (the official website for the Tetris.com rights holders). The original game music is even included! Tetrisfriends.com has a lot of other variations too, but the best, by far is Tetris 1989.

Quinn (OS X)
-- Official variations for Tetris have been available for the Mac throughout Tetris's history, but the best native OS X iteration is Quinn, a tetromino game made specifically for OS X. You can even download special piece styles and backgrounds to make Quinn look more or less retro. Also, don't forget about the neat (if ultimately kludgy) implementation of Tetris included with emacs bundled in OS X.

The Original Tetris (MS-DOS, all 32-bit versions of Windows, including Windows 7) -- Developed a few days after the initial Electronica 60 prototype of the game, the MS-DOS port of the original game still exists, thanks to Vadim Gerasimov, whole helped create the port. His page discussing the development process for Tetris is an interesting read.

Tetrislight
(Tetris for Silverlight) -- This is a neat Tetris implmentation using Silverlight rather than Flash. It's fun and the keyboard controls correlate to the old Microsoft Entertainment Pack of yore.

Quadra (Linux) -- There are lots of various Tetris-like games available for various Linux builds (Netris is a fun one), but I like Quadra because of its network support. It was also recently updated. Check out the Google Code page too!
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