Tetris Forever is the latest in Digital Eclipse’s Gold Master Series, a format that bundles expertly emulated classic games with reams of multimedia information presented in an interactive timeline: filmed interviews, archive video, documentation, artwork, photography, and more. It’s officially the third entry in the series, after the single-title deep dive The Making of Karateka and the astonishingly comprehensive Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story (which is basically the real-life UFO 50), although the format was established in the developer’s excellent Atari 50.
What really distinguishes Tetris Forever from those more conventional takes on the Tetris story is its dedication to tracking the evolution of the game itself through countless editions on every imaginable platform. But, while all the key variations of Tetris are mentioned (and a few more besides), the publishing rights are so broadly scattered through history that there is no way for Digital Eclipse — or even Rogers and Pajitnov’s rights holder, The Tetris Company, which clearly collaborated closely on this release — to include playable versions of many of them.
Nintendo, as fiercely protective of its back catalog titles as ever, has not turned over the rights for any of its own Tetris variants to the project. This means that arguably the two definitive versions of Tetris — the iconic Game Boy Tetris, which found the perfect match of form and function, and NES Tetris, which is still the gold standard in competitive Tetris play — are not included. (The Game Boy game is available on Nintendo Switch Online, and the NES game is due to be added to the service this winter.) Sega’s classic arcade version is out, as are Arika’s hardcore Tetris: The Grand Master games.
Tetris DS is still king after 18 years.